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SORDELLO'S STORY 



RETOLD IN PROSE 



BY 



ANNIE WALL 









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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY /^ ' 

(€6e Ifttoersi&e $restf, (£amfiri&Ge 

1886 



Copyright, 1886, 
By ANNIE WALL. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



1 

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To 
MY FRIENDS OF THE "SORDELLO CLUB" 

(C$$ Hittfe 'iBooft 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

IN MEMORY OP 
THE PLEASANT HOURS WHEN WE HEARD 

SORDELLO'S STORY 

TOLD. 



Ma vedi la un anima, ch' a posta 

Sola soletta verso noi riguarda ; 

Quella ne insegnera la via piu tosta. 
Venimmo a lei, anima lombarda, 

Come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa, 

E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda ? 
Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa ; 

Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando, 

A guisa di leon, quando, si posa. 
Pur Virgilio si trasse a lei pregando 

Che ne mostrasse la miglior salita ; 

E quella non rispose al suo dimando ; 
Ma di nostro paese, e della vita 

Ci chiese. E '1 dolce Duca incominciava ; 

Mantova. E 1 ? ombra, tutta in se romita, 
Surse ver lui del luogo ove pria stava, 

Dicendo ; Mantovano, io son Sordello, 

Delia tua terra. E 1' un 1' altro abbraciava. 
Dante, Purgatorio, Canto vi., verses 5S-75. 



. 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



Soleva Roma, che '1 buon mondo feo, 

Due Soli aver ; che 1'. una e 1' altra strada 
Facean vedere e del Mondo, e del Dio. 

L' un 1' altro ha spento, ed e giunta la spada 
Col pastorale ; e 1' un col altro insieme 
Per viva f orza mal convien che vada ; 

Perocche, giunti 1' un 1' altro non teme. 

Dante, Purgatorio, Canto 17, Verses 106-112. 










HISTOKICAL INTEODUCTION. 




HE scene of " Sordello " is laid in 
Lombardy, in the early part of the 
thirteenth century, when Freder- 
ick II. is Emperor, and Honorius III. Pope. 
It is needful that we should have some 
knowledge of the political and social condi- 
tion of Italy at that period, if we wish to 
enter into the spirit of the poem, to enjoy 
its historical allusions or be able in any way 
to comprehend the problems that vexed Sor- 
dello's soul. 



The empire of Charles the Great, which 
he ruled, as he believed, by divine commis- 
sion, had included nearly all of western 
Christendom, but the revived empire of Otto 
the Great, established early in the tenth 
century, consisted of Germany and Lom- 



io Historical Introduction, 

bardy, with the Romagna, and to this Bur- 
gundy was afterwards added ; and it was 
Otto who fixed the principle that to the 
German king belonged the Roman crown. 

The friend and protector of the church, 
Charles had always held himself the Pope's 
superior, and Otto and his immediate suc- 
cessors gained many privileges in respect to 
papal elections. 

The crown of Germany was elective, al- 
though often passing in one family for sev- 
eral generations, and to the elected King of 
the Franks, as he was called, came of right, 
it was understood, the crowns of Burgundy, 
Lombardy and the Roman Empire, the lat- 
ter bestowed by the Pope at Rome. 

Pope and Emperor were supposed to be 
the vicars of God on earth in spiritual and 
temporal affairs, equal and coordinate. But 
the theory was rarely observed in practice, 
and the culmination of the struggle for su- 
premacy between the two powers took place 
in the reign of the Emperor Henry IV. of 
Franeonia, and the papacy of Gregory VII., 
the famous Hildebrand. 



Historical Introduction. u 

It was the struggle between church and 
state, which had already occurred on a 
smaller scale in various cases, and which 
shortly after broke out in England in the 
dispute between Henry II. and Becket. 

The quarrel ended in a compromise, in 
which most of the gains were on the side of 
the papacy, and it was renewed with great 
fierceness in the reign of Frederick I. of Ho- 
henstaufen, called the Red Beard, who came 
to the throne in 1152, and who, desiring to 
vindicate the claims of his office to equal 
sanctity with that of his opponent, bestowed 
upon the Empire the title of The Holy. 

The cities of Lombardy, commonwealths 
somewhat after the fashion of those of an- 
cient Greece, had grown to be very rich and 
strong, and although ready to admit the 
Emperor's authority in theory, were strik- 
ingly averse to submitting to any manifesta- 
tion of it in practice. The city of Milan, 
by her attacks upon a weaker neighbor, who 
appealed to Frederick for aid, began a war 
which resulted in the Peace of Constance in 



12 Historical Introduction. 

1183, by which the Caesar abandoned all 
but a nominal authority over the Lombard 
League, which in the long contest had re- 
ceived aid from the Pope, and hence, al- 
though some of the cities were strongly im- 
perialist, was mainly papal in its sympathies. 
The son and successor of Frederick, Henry 
VI., married Constance, the heiress of the 
Norman kingdom of Sicily, which was a 
fief of the papal crown, and thenceforth a 
new point of quarrel between Pope and Em- 
peror. 

On the death of Henry came his brother, 
Philip, who, being shortly afterwards mur- 
dered, made way for Otto of Saxony, a 
nephew of John of England. But trouble 
arising between Otto and the Pope, he was 
finally deposed, and his place filled by Fred- 
erick, the son of Henry VI. and Constance 
of Sicily, who had been chosen, during his 
father's lifetime, King of the Romans, but 
was set aside, as too young to govern, in 
behalf of his uncle, Philip, and, curiously 
enough, considering his future relations to 



Historical Introduction. 13 

the papacy, was, in his early years, the ward 
of Innocent III. 

Frederick, stupor mundi et immutator 
mirabilis, as Matthew Paris calls him, re- 
ceived the German crown at Aachen in 
1215, the imperial crown at Rome in 1230, 
and died in 1250 at Fiorentino, worn out 
with perpetual struggles and under the ban 
of the Pope. When young he had assumed 
the cross, and the Church thereby acquired 
a hold over him which was never aban- 
doned, while disputes in reference to Sicily 
soon arose between him and Honorius. 

When tidings came of the misfortunes 
which had befallen the French crusaders in 
Egypt and the loss of Damietta, — mishaps 
really due to the bad conduct of the cru- 
saders themselves, — the Pope attributed 
them to Frederick's failure to fulfil his 
vow. The exigencies of the time, however, 
seemed to require the Emperor's presence 
at home, nor was the crusading spirit then 
especially prevalent in Europe. 

John of Brienne, the dethroned king of 



14 Historical Introduction. 

Jerusalem, wandered from court to court, 
vainly seeking aid to recover his crown, and 
in 1235, Frederick, who had married his 
daughter, Jolande, declared her claims to be 
better than her father's, which were asserted 
only in right of his late wife. He then as- 
sumed for himself, in virtue of Jolande's 
heirship, the title of king, and soon after 
began to fit out an expedition for the re- 
covery of the kingdom. 

In the midst of all these disturbances 
Honorius died, and his place was filled by a 
man of great ability, the aged Cardinal 
Ugolino, who assumed the title of Gregory 
IX., and issued a mandate to the princes of 
Christendom for an immediate crusade. 

Frederick assembled a fleet at Brindisi, 
where the plague fell upon his army, cutting 
off many, among others the Landgrave of 
Thuringia, the husband of St. Elizabeth of 
Hungary. 

The squadron set sail, but the Emperor 
falling ill himself, his return was unavoid- 
able, though it brought down a speedy ex- 



Historical Introduction. 15 

communication upon his head ; he issued, in 
reply, an address to the sovereigns of Eu- 
rope, in which he stated his reasons for re- 
turning, and called upon all to resist the 
intolerable assumptions of the papacy. 
" Your own houses," wrote he, " are in dan- 
ger, when your neighbor's is in flames ! " 

Again excommunicated, Frederick set 
forth at last, with a fleet of some twenty 
sail, " more like a pirate than a prince," 
said Gregory, and landed at Ptolemais, 
where he was coldly received by the various 
parties, who, for the moment, hushed their 
constant bickerings to insult the temporal 
head of Christendom. 

The Sultan of Babylon (Cairo), Malek 
Kameel, was engaged at that moment in a 
quarrel with Malek Moadhim, the Sultan of 
Damascus, and was disposed to give some 
privileges to the Christians if he could 
thereby weaken his enemy. He accordingly 
treated with Frederick for Jerusalem and 
the surrounding territory, which were to 
pass into the hands of the Christians, while 



1 6 Historical Introduction. 

civil rights and the exclusive possession of 
the Mosque of Oniar were secured to the 
Moslems. But the Holy City itself was 
placed under the ban of the Church, and 
the Patriarch refusing to perform the coro- 
nation ceremony, Frederick set the crown 
upon his head with his own hand, after- 
wards placing a second diadem upon the 
brow of his wife. 

It was a bloodless triumph, but it drew 
down upon the victor a storm of reproach, 
as if never before had treaties been made be- 
tween Christian and Mohammedan princes ; 
papal intrigues hastened his return, nor did 
the quarrel end until the death of Gregory. 

In an evil hour for Frederick the choice 
of a new Pope fell upon a Genoese cardinal, 
upon whom he had conferred many favors, 
and who, up to this time, had been one of 
his staunch supporters. " In the Cardinal," 
said Frederick, to some one who congratu- 
lated him on the election, " I have lost my 
best friend ; in the Pope I shall find my 
worst enemy. No Pope can be a Ghibel- 
line." 



Historical Introduction. ij 

In a council summoned in 1245 at Lyons, 
the Pope, Innocent IV., who found the gen- 
eral sentiment of Europe among princes and 
people, and even largely among Church- 
men, to be opposed to him, proposed to try 
his case against Frederick. 

But the Emperor's lawyer found that no 
justice was to be looked for, and in an able 
speech he appealed from that to a future 
tribunal, from the Pope, who was his sover- 
eign's enemy, to one more just hereafter. 
Vainly did French and English envoys re- 
monstrate, for even the pious St. Louis and 
the priest-ridden Henry III. disapproved of 
Innocent's conduct, the Pope was resolved 
upon his course. 

Without taking the vote of the Council 
he rose from his seat in the midst of the 
panic-stricken Churchmen, and declared the 
Emperor to be excommunicated and de- 
posed, and his subjects absolved from their 
allegiance, the sentence being accompanied 
by the extinction of torches and other cere- 
monial, " while the general awe was height- 



1 8 Historical Introduction. 

ened by the appearance of a meteor, which, 
as the words were spoken, shot across the 
sky." 

At this juncture Frederick made the mis- 
take of confounding the cause of the Pope, 
then everywhere unpopular, with that of the 
clergy at large ; he lost his self-control and 
indulged in vituperations of the whole body, 
which caused many of his strongest sup- 
porters, the German prelates, to fall away 
from him, and rendered his cause less gen- 
erally favored. 

Five years of warfare ensued, and in 1250 
Frederick expired, in the arms of his son 
Manfred, who succeeded him in Sicily, 
leaving behind him a fame which not even 
papal hatred could destroy. 

In Germany, the great Churchmen were 
long on his side, and when they fell away, 
his barons, many of them old enemies, 
rallied about him. His legislation was far 
in advance of any other of his time, and in 
some respects, in regard to agriculture and 
commerce, appears to have anticipated the 



Historical Introduction. ig 

most advanced thought of to-day ; in Sicily 
he liberated the Commons from the tyranny 
of feudal lords and ecclesiastical rule, freed 
the serfs upon his own estates, and legalized 
ownership of property by that class ; made 
justice easily accessible to all, established 
semi-annual parliaments where the cities 
appeared by their delegates, entered into 
commercial treaties with the great sea-faring 
nations of the day, and, like Elizabeth of 
England, engaged in many ventures on his 
own account. 

He founded schools and universities, and 
Greek being then the spoken language of a 
large part of his people, its literature was 
carefully preserved, and might never have 
passed from the knowledge of Europe, had 
the rule of his house continued in Sicily. 

His knowledge of Arabic opened to him 
many famous works, and he ordered many 
translations to be made from that language 
and the Greek for the use of his subjects, 
that of Aristotle being intrusted to one of 
his chief advisers, a scholar from a far-off 



20 Historical Introduction. 

northern land, " the wizard," Michael Scott. 
Literature and Art could not fail to flourish 
under a prince who was himself philosopher 
and poet ; Greek and Arabian writers 
thronged his court, the Minnesaenger of 
Germany, the Troubadours of Provence and 
Guienne, and the French Trouveres wan- 
dered over the Alps to join their brethren 
in minstrelsy, and the Italian Muse sang her 
first songs in the sweet Sicilian tongue. 

Spite of a professed acceptance of the 
doctrines current in his time, Frederick II. 
was accounted as being far from orthodox 
in his religious opinions. His sarcastic wit 
often shocked an age peculiarly reverential 
of forms, and his tolerance of the beliefs of 
others could then be explained only on the 
supposition that he had lost his own. More- 
over, the irregularities of his private life and 
his occasional outbursts of cruelty laid him 
open to deserved censure. It is not strange 
that his faith in church doctrines should have 
been weakened by the cruel injustice which 
he suffered from the Church's head, and we 



Historical Introduction. 21 

can easily believe that a man of his intel- 
lectual powers might have glimpses of some- 
thing better than the average theology of 
the day ; it is quite certain also that most 
rulers of that period resembled him far 
more in his defects than in his excellences, 
and that his ruined life was an irreparable 
misfortune to Europe. 

The strife in the reign of Frederick II. 
was not, says Dean Milman, " for any spe- 
cific point in dispute, like the right of inves- 
titure, but avowedly for supremacy on one 
side, which hardly deigned to call itself in- 
dependence ; for independence on the other, 
which, remotely at least, aspired after su- 
premacy. Caesar would bear no superior, 
the successor of St. Peter no equal." 1 

Too far in advance of his age to be in 
sympathy with it, prevented by force of 
circumstances from pursuing a consistent 
imperial policy, Frederick, the wonder of 
the world though he was, failed to produce 

1 It was a saying in Rome that Caesar would brook no 
superior, Pompey no equal. 



22 Historical Introduction. 

upon his time any impression commensurate 
with his vast abilities ; yet he did much, and 
the fruits of his legislation in Germany were 
reaped in a later reign, while untold pros- 
perity might have been the result in Sicily, 
but for the French invasion and the ensuing 
wars. 

As for Frederick himself, he remains for 
us one of the most brilliant and interesting 
actors upon the stage of the world's history, 
the most splendid figure in the most splendid 
of imperial houses, a man whose faults were 
largely due to his position and the time in 
which he lived, whose virtues and transcen- 
dent powers were all his own. 

Nothing could well have been more stormy 
than life in a mediaeval Italian city, where 
an hundred questions complicated politics in 
a most perplexing fashion. There were 
Ghibelline cities, or those that sided with 
the Emperor in his perennial quarrel with 
the Pope, and Guelfic cities, or those which 
supported the Papal cause, but in each was 



Historical Introduction. 23 

to be found a minority of the opposite party. 
Every city, moreover, had her ever-recurring 
disputes with the baron most influential in 
her territory, while the great burgher-fami- 
lies mingled party politics with private 
feuds. The strife was waged with horrible 
cruelty ; burning houses, murdered men, wo- 
men and children were no rare sights in 
those days ; good faith was rare, and treaties 
seemed made but to be broken. The cities, 
which were commonwealths much after the 
old Greek type, had grown rapidly in wealth 
and power, due largely to the development 
of the industrial arts, but their literature 
was, as yet, of foreign growth, and the fine 
arts were awaiting that full glory that was 
to come from the flood of Hellenic light 
that was to waken them to new and diviner 
life and splendors. 

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
there had been developed a rich and bril- 
liant literature, — that of the Langue d'Oc. 

The name of Romance has been applied 



24 Historical Introduction. 

to those languages which were spoken in 
Italy, Gaul, and Spain, and which were 
formed from a mixture of the common 
speech of Roman colonists and soldiers with 
the language of conquered Gauls and con- 
quering Germans. Distinct from the classic 
Latin of the Schools, the Law, and the 
Church, they were despised as bad Latin 
for a long time, but gradually formed them- 
selves into groups, which we recognize to-day 
as Italian, French, ProvenQal, Spanish, etc. 
The Provencal or Langue d'Oc was 
spoken in Guienne and Poitou, Toulouse 
and Provence : the first three principalities 
acknowledged the suzerainty of the French 
king, although their allegiance sat but lightly 
upon them ; the latter was a portion of the 
Holy Roman Empire. One very marked 
characteristic of their civilization was the 
power and civil freedom of their great cities, 
whose institutions dated from the period of 
Roman occupation, and which were centres 
of wealth, learning, and refinement. Their 
exquisite language had here become highly 



Historical Introduction. 25 

developed and polished by their poets, who 
sang in melodious strains of love and war, 
of the spring-tide with its flowers and birds, 
the running streams that sparkled in the 
sunshine, the blue sky that bent so tenderly 
above them. 

The Troubadours, as their poets were 
called, from the word troubar, to invent, 
were for the most part gay gentlemen and 
gallant warriors, who, like William of Ac- 
quitaine and Richard the Lion-Heart, were 
equally skillful with lance and lute, or 
stately dames, like Eleanor of Guienne and 
Eleanor of Provence, who practiced the art 
upon which they smiled. 

Moreover, the Troubadours were ardent 
in devotion to some ladye-fair, in honor of 
whom they were always ready to indulge, 
not only in high-flown praise, but in ex- 
traordinary and fantastic adventures, worthy 
of Don Quixote himself, although they were 
far less constant in affairs of the heart than 
that chivalrous hero. 

The Jongleurs, or professional minstrels, 



26 Historical Introduction. 

were often attached to the personal service 
of a great baron or lady, and sang the songs 
of the Troubadours more commonly than 
their own, while they frequently added to 
their musical attainments great proficiency 
in sleight-of-hand performances. They also 
sometimes became strolling glee-men, wan- 
dering from place to place, and present on 
fair and market-days, accompanied, it might 
be, by an ape, who was trained to the per- 
formance of amusing tricks. 

Life was rich and charming in Southern 
Gaul; democratic institutions flourished in 
her cities, her fertile soil, 

" Where new pollen on the lily-petal grows 
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose," 

gave abundantly of its fruits, and man, na- 
ture, and art rejoiced together. 

But freedom of thought grew up in this 
free atmosphere ; the famous heresy of the 
Albigenses, so called from the city of Alby, 
in the county of Toulouse, spread over the 
country, and was supported by Count Eay- 



Historical Introduction. 2j 

mond himself, while it provoked the wrath 
of the Pope Innocent III., who found in the 
zeal of Montfort and the cupidity of Philip 
Augustus implements ready to his hand, and 
the thirty-years horror of the Albigensian 
war trampled out the fair civilization of 
Toulouse in fire and blood. 

But the Langue d'Oc not only obtained in 
those lands where it was the speech of the 
people ; its literary precedence made it the 
court language of the kings of Aragon and 
Navarre, whose sway extended at that time 
north of the Pyrenees, and also of the 
princely courts of northern Italy, whose 
poets neglected the yet rude dialects of their 
own land in favor of their more polished 
sister. 

About this time, also, is the period of the 
Trouveres, the poets of the old French, or 
Langue d'Oil, who give us the chansons de 
gestes, among which stands first the noble 
11 Song of Roland ; " while Germany, like 
the England of Elizabeth, was " a nest of 
singing birds." The Minnesaenger were 



28 Historical Introduction. 

the contemporaries of the Troubadours and 
the Trouv&res, and Barbarossa and his son 
Henry wrote verses in German and Proven- 
cal, as well as governed empires, and led 
armies into battle. 

The first poets, in any Italian dialect, 
whose works remain, were the poets of 
Sicily, who, at the court of their all-accom- 
plished master, King Frederick, essayed to 
sing in native strains. It was but a short- 
lived poetry, however, perishing when the 
promise of its lovely birth-place was de- 
stroyed, as that of Toulouse had been, by 
the united forces of the papacy and the 
French, and it was reserved for the Tuscan 
to become, through the genius of Dante, the 
mistress of the dialects of Italy. 



THE GUELFS AND THE GHIBELLINES. 

At the beginning of the reign of Conrad 
III. the first Hohenstaufen Emperor, the 
imperial crown was contested by Henry the 
Proud, Duke of Saxony. In a battle be- 



Historical Introduction. 2Q 

tween the opposing parties the Saxons used 
as their war-cry the name of their leader, 
Duke Henry's brother, Welf, while the 
Swabian army responded with shouts of 
" Waibling ! " a name derived from that of 
the village where their leader, Conrad's 
brother, had been born. 

The names, transplanted into Italy, be- 
came Guelf and Ghibelline, and long sur- 
vived as the titles of two hostile political 
parties, that of the Popes and that of the 
Emperors. 

DANTE'S IMPERIALISM. 

Dante's ardent imperialism is well known 
to all who have read the story of " the ban- 
ished Ghibelline ; " but it is quite possible 
that all may not understand in precisely 
what that imperialism consisted. 

He accepted absolutely the mediaeval the- 
ory of the two divinely-appointed heads of 
the world, the spiritual and the temporal, 
the Pope and the Emperor. He lived dur- 
ing the pontificate of Boniface VIII., who 



jo Historical Introduction. 

arrogated to himself temporal as well as 
spiritual supremacy, showing himself to the 
multitudes who thronged the streets of 
Rome during the Great Jubilee of the year 
1300, seated upon a throne, and holding in 
his hands two swords, while he cried with a 
loud voice, " I am Caesar ! " 

In the year 1312 that wise and powerful 
sovereign, Henry of Luxemburg, came to 
Rome, where he received the golden crown 
of the empire. He died soon after, unhap- 
pily, and with him perished all the hopes of 
the Ghibellines, but he was the ideal ruler 
to whom the Florentine patriot looked for 
the regeneration of the world. 

Dante's doctrinal orthodoxy is testified to 
by the fact that, although he praises Fred- 
erick II. for good laws and wise government, 
he has plunged him, for free-thinking, into 
the flames of hell ; but he greatly reprobated 
the Popes' assumption of temporal sway, 
which he believed contrary to their duty as 
spiritual chiefs. 

To Dante, moreover, who had witnessed 



Historical Introduction. 31 

the horrors of perpetual civil warfare, who 
had eaten the bitter bread of exile and toil- 
somely climbed "the stairs of others," it 
seemed, not unnaturally, that the one earthly 
good most to be desired is peace. This 
blessing he held to be attainable only under 
the sway of a monarch, the divinely ap- 
pointed Emperor, who was placed so far 
above the strifes and jealousies of parties 
that he could deal impartial justice, and 
preserve peace and orderly rule for man- 
kind. 

But this monarch, all-powerful though he 
be, " is," says Dean Milman, " no arbitrary 
despot, but a constitutional sovereign ; he is 
the Roman Law impersonated in the Em- 
peror ; a monarch who should leave all the 
nations, all the free Italian cities, in posses- 
sion of their rights and old municipal insti- 
tutions." 



jj2 Historical Introduction. 

CHIEF PERSONS OF THE POEM. 
GHIBELLINES. 

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, fourth 
King and Emperor of the Swabian House ; 
King of Germany, Burgundy, Lombardy, 
Sicily, and Jerusalem, Emperor of the Ro- 
mans. 

Ecelin of Romano, called the Monk ; a 
great Ghibelline baron of Northern Italy, 
the most powerful noble in the Trevisan 
March. He rose to power under previous 
emperors, and was much favored by Freder- 
ick, but was now desirous of retiring from 
the world. He was one of the Paterini 
(the sufferers, or the resigned), a sect akin 
to the Albigenses of southern Gaul, to the 
Italian Cathari and the Armenian Pauli- 
cians. They included in their number not 
only many of the townsfolk, but of the 
barons of Lombardy. Like their Northern 
brethren they were proceeded against with 
great cruelty by the Popes. A crusade was 
inaugurated against them under the lead of 



Historical Introduction. 33 

the Preaching Friars, and many hundreds 
were put to death. Ecelin's first wife, repre- 
sented in the poem as the mother of Palma, 
was Agnes, the sister of Azzo of Este ; his 
last was Adelaide, a Tuscan lady ; she was 
the mother of his two sons, Ecelin III., 
called the Tyrant, and Alberic, who suc- 
ceeded to their father's lands and power in 
Lombardy. They were both cruel and op- 
pressive in their rule, and both were finally 
slain by their wretched subjects. 

Taurello Salinguerra, a great warrior 
and a skillful politician, with all the accom- 
plishments of his day. He is devoted to 
the service of his over-lord Ecelin of Ro- 
mano, in whose interests he is completely 
absorbed. He married for his first wife 
Retrude, of the family of the Hohenstaufen, 
who perished at Vicenza in a midnight in- 
surrection ; her son was supposed to have 
perished with her, but was saved, and is the 
Sordello of our story. He is hidden by 
Adelaide, who by her magic arts sees in 

Taurello those signs of greatness which 
3 



34 Historical Introduction. 

show him destined to accomplish much if he 
have an end to work for. She hopes by de- 
priving Taurello of his child to secure his 
entire service for her husband. Salin- 
guerra's subsequent history is told us in the 
poem. 

Palma, otherwise Cunizza, is the daugh- 
ter of Ecelin the Monk. She became the 
wife of St. Boniface, and the heroine of 
many adventures. Legend says that she 
fell in love with Sordello, for whom she de- 
serted her husband ; she was afterwards 
twice married. Dante places her in Para- 
dise, in the Heaven of Venus. She is rep- 
resented in the poem as desiring to marry 
Sordello, whom she would inspire with her 
own Ghibelline sentiments, and raise to a 
prominent post under the Emperor. 

Adelaide, wife of Ecelin the Monk. She 
is said to have practiced magic arts, to fore- 
see the future, to learn what was going on 
at a distance, and to restore her own failing 
strength. 

Tito, a Tyrolese, envoy of the Emperor 
to Taurello Salinguerra. 



Historical Introduction. 35 

GUELFS. 

Honorius III., Pope. He died in 1227. 
He was a man of great ability, and bent 
upon enforcing the theory of the papal su- 
premacy. He sanctioned the establishment 
of the Dominican and Franciscan Friars. 
The quarrel with Frederick in regard to the 
Crusade began in his reign, but it did not 
come to extremities until the pontificate of 
his successor, Gregory IX. 
Azzo, Marquis of Este, ) Lombard 

Count Richard of St. Boniface, j barons. 
The Papal Legate. 

Sordello. The Sordello of the poem is 
represented as the supposed son of an 
archer, El Corte by name, who has been 
brought up by Adelaide, wife of Ecelin of 
Romano, at her castle of Goito. His father 
had saved the life of Adelaide and her son 
in the same midnight fray in which the wife 
and child of Salinguerra were said to have 



$6 Historical Introduction. 

perished, and as he had been killed in the 
fight his son has been cared for out of grati- 
tude for the father's service. The youth be- 
comes at last the favored minstrel of Ro- 
mano's daughter, Palma, who gives him her 
love, and having learned his true parentage 
from the dying Adelaide, proclaims Sordello 
to be, not the archer's child, but the son of 
Taurello Salinguerra. 

As for the Sordello of history the stories 
are many and various that are told of him, 
some writers thinking that there were two 
persons of the same name, whose deeds have 
been confounded, — the one the Trouba- 
dour, the other, an able and just Podesta 1 of 
Mantua. One writer would have us believe 
that the latter, who is said to have been a 
Ghibelline, is the Sordello whom Dante and 
Virgil meet in Purgatory, and to whom Ben- 
venuto da Imola alluded as nobilis et pru- 
dens miles et curialis. 

Raynouard, in his " Poetry of the Trou- 

1 Head of the city government ; generally appointed 
by the Emperor* 



Historical Introduction. }j 

badours," declares him to have been a Man- 
tuan, the son of a poor knight, named El 
Corte ; he says, that being fond of verse- 
making, Sordello came to the court of Count 
Richard of St. Boniface at Mantua, where 
he was much honored. Here, " for the 
sake of pastime," he made love to the 
Count's wife, Cunizza, and finally ran away 
with the lady, being urged thereto by her 
brothers, who had quarreled with Richard. 
He afterwards came to the court of Ray- 
mond Berenger, Count of Provence, who, 
like his wife, was a great friend of poets, 
and here he won, not only great renown, but 
a fine castle and a gentlewoman for his 
wife. 

The Mantuan Chroniclers assert that he 
was of the Visconti family, that he married 
the daughter of Romano, and governed well 
and wisely as the Emperor's Podesta and 
Vicar-General of Northern Italy. 

A Troubadour, according to yet another 
writer, who wrote much in the Provencal 
language, not of love, but of philosophy. 



38 Historical Introduction. 

Although this statement seems hardly borne 
out by the poems that remain, it may have 
reference to some of those of which 
" Naddo " speaks with such disapproval. 
One of his most famous productions is a 
funeral song for Blancasso, a distinguished 
knight and troubadour. 

According to still another biographer he 
was born at Goito, a village near Mantua, 
being the son of a poor knight, El Corte, 
and became St. Boniface's minstrel, falling 
in love with his wife and taking refuge in 
Provence, where he came to great advance- 
ment ; returning thence he was made gov- 
ernor of Mantua, and died full of years and 
honors. 

He is reported to have received the prize 
of bravery in a tourney from St. Lewis of 
France. 

He wrote not only in the fashionable Pro- 
ven $al, but also in his native Italian, al- 
though none of his poems in the latter lan- 
guage remain. 

For this Dante, in his treatise De Volgari 



Historical Introduction. jg 

Eloquio, bestows upon him great praise. 
He says that there was at that time a city- 
speech, which was understood by all culti- 
vated people in all parts of Italy, and com- 
mends Sordello that he made use of this 
rather than of a country dialect, which must 
be comprehensible to but few. This, also, 
is the reason why Browning speaks of him 
as the precursor of Dante. 

It has been said that like most of the 
Troubadours, Sordello was a Ghibelline ; in 
that case he would hardly have been at- 
tached to the household of St. Boniface, or 
on such terms with that bitter foe of the 
Hohenstaufen, the cruel Charles of Anjou, 
as to have been invited by the latter to ac- 
company him on a crusade. The minstrel's 
answer reminds us of the passage in Brown- 
ing's poem, in which our hero wishes for 
" firmer arm and fleeter foot, but no mad 
wings." 

" My Lord Count," he says, " you ought 
not thus to ask one to face death. Every 
one is seeking his salvation by sea ; but for 



40 Historical Introduction. 

my own part I am not eager to obtain it. 
My wish is to be transported to another life 
as late as possible." In fact it would seem 
as if Sordello must have gradually risen to 
a place among the Troubadours, who were 
for the most part gentlemen of rank ; his 
original position in the household of St. 
Boniface being, perhaps, more clearly indi- 
cated by the term Jongleur. Still we do 
find Jongleurs who were knights as well; 
for example the famous Taillefer, the favor- 
ite minstrel of William of Normandy, who 
rode in front of the invading army at the 
battle of Senlac, tossing his sword into the 
air, and catching it as it fell, while he sang 
gayly the " Song of Koland." 

In a long teuson, or poetical debate, be- 
tween Sordello and a brother Troubadour, 
we find the question under discussion to be, 
which is preferable, love or glory, and the 
Mantuan pronounces without qualification 
in favor of the former. 

Still another tradition seems to point to 
him as a son of Salinguerra, and this Brown- 



Historical Introduction. 41 

ing has adopted, and from the many varying 
characteristics has shaped his hero, whom 
we must accept as the poet has given him 
to us, holding him, for the time at least, to 
be the Sordello, not only of the poem, but 
of history as well. 

Unless we do this we shall miss the whole 
force of the comparison and contrast with 
Dante, and so one of the most striking feat- 
ures of the poem. 



THE STORY OF THE POEM. 



Say not the struggle naught availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 

The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 

And as things have been, they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars, 
It may be, in the smoke concealed ; 

Your comrades chase even now the fliers, 
And, but for you, possess the field. 

Arthur Hugh Clough. 



THE STORY OF THE POEM. 



BOOK I. 




|51 HO will," says Browning, " may- 



hear Sordello's story told." 
As from the mountain-top Don 
Quixote beheld, amid the dust and din of 
multitudes, the great king, Pentapolin of 
the Iron Arm, struggling bravely in the 
press, so the poet has singled out a fellow- 
singer, seen dimly through the gloom of 
" six long sad hundred years," and presents 
him to us. 



The poem opens in Verona, a city of 
Lombardy, in the early part of the thir- 
teenth century, when Frederick II. is Em- 
peror, and Honorius III. 1 is Pope. The old 

1 If Sordello, u born with the new century," is thirty 
years old when the story opens, it might seem that the 
Pope should he Gregory IX. Honorius died in 1227 ; an 
interregnum of two years followed, when Gregory was 
chosen. 



46 The Story of the Poem. 

strife of the Guelfs and Ghibellines is go- 
ing on as usual ; Count Richard of St. 
Boniface, the Lord of Mantua, has allied 
himself with Azzo, Marquis of Este, to over- 
turn the power of Taurello Salinguerra, the 
right hand of Ecelin of Romano, who is the 
most powerful Ghibelline baron of Northern 
Italy and much trusted by the Emperor. 

The news has just reached Verona that, 
caught in their own toils, the Guelfic chiefs 
have been taken captive at Ferrara, and the 
citizens are gathered together in the market- 
place, eagerly discussing the event. 

" Ah," says one, " Taurello's power did 
certainly seem to be on the wane ; Ecelin 
has withdrawn into a monastery, where he 
is slowly dying of a wasting sickness ; the 
Caesar delays his coming, looked for long 
since, and the papal party has been gaining 
strength. The Guelfs in Ferrara rebuilt 
their ruined houses, believing themselves se- 
cure ; it has even been asserted that two 
chiefs of the rival parties, meeting in a nar- 
row street, crowded full of Ghibellines, act- 



The Story of the Poem. 47 

ually passed without a fight. Such a state 
of things is too unnatural to last. Then 
Taurello, assuming his presence to be the 
sole obstacle to a permanent peace, left Fer- 
rara for Padua. But no sooner was he gone 
than there was a Guelfic rising, rioting be- 
gan, — lo ! in an instant Taurello was in 
their midst and took a signal vengeance. 
Azzo fled, and, returning with St. Boniface, 
laid siege to the city ; at length a parley 
was called, and the two Guelfs entered the 
town, over whose deserted streets rested an 
ominous silence ; suddenly they were seized 
with all their train, and thrown into prison, 
and Salinguerra triumphed." 

Such are the tidings that have reached 
Verona, and all are agog for battle ! 

The Emperor, delaying for the moment 
his projected crusade, proposes to come to 
Lombardy ; he is very unwilling that the 
Pope should succeed in regaining any of the 
privileges which have been won in the past 
by Otto the Great and Barbarossa, and so 
defers his Syrian expedition until matters 



48 The Story of the Poem. 

are more settled at home ; an act for which 
he is excommunicated by Honorius. " Ece- 
lin's father," say the Veronese, " was Ecelo, 
who came into power under Conrad III., re- 
ceiving large fiefs in Northern Italy, which 
he has transmitted to his son, the present 
lord, who received additional favors from 
Frederick I. Ecelin is Lord of Romano, 
high in imperial favor, and the father of 
many sons and daughters, and, despite his 
hard heart and sickly person, has thriven 
greatly in the world, which he has now so 
inexplicably resolved to abandon. His prime 
support is Salinguerra, a superb, easy-going 
chieftain, whose life has, however, been a 
lonely one. Years ago wife and child per- 
ished in a party fray, and careless of him- 
self, he has bent all his energies to prop 
the House of Romano." " Are these," ask 
the Veronese burghers, " the leaders to com- 
pare with Azzo of Este, the Guelfic Lion ? " 
All night long the people talk and listen ; 
all night long the Twenty-Four, the magis- 
trates of Verona, sit in solemn debate to- 



The Story of the Poem. 49 

gether ; and in a small inner chamber of the 
palace are Palma, the daughter of Romano, 
and Sordello, the hero of our tale, the pre- 
cursor of Dante, as a singer in the native 
tongue of Italy. Who is Sordello, and why- 
is he here in the secret room, with the great 
baron's daughter ? This is the story which 
the poet proceeds to tell us. 

About the city of Mantua the land is half 
slough half pine forest, with water-courses 
fringed with scarlet-oaks and maples ; in 
summer even the Mincio is dry ; but in win- 
ter it is one broad morass, but half redeemed 
by human toil to human uses. Some thirty 
years before the scene we have described, 
the castle of Goito stood almost alone in 
such a recovered spot, surrounded by low 
mountains, whose main defiles were hidden 
by firs and birches and bound about with 
vineyards. 

A castle full of winding corridors and 
noble rooms, one of which, maple-paneled, 
and ornamented with Arabic inscriptions 



50 The Story of the Poem. 

in burnished gold, was hung with arras, 
on which were pictured the proud barons 
and fair dames of the House of Romano, 
while yet beyond, in a vaulted chamber, 
stood a font of stone, encircled by a group 
of marble maidens, by whom, for many a 
year, Sordello was wont to sit at eventide, 
and pray that they might win pardon for 
the sins for which he fancied them to be 
doing penance in stone. 

Sordello is a slender boy, in page's dress, 
who watches the birds in the autumn days, 
and spends his hours in winter in gazing at 
the forms depicted on the arras. 

He is a princely boy, whom nature seems 
to have formed for pleasure, — one of the 
regal class, separated from the mass of men 
who are doomed to toil, and placed among 
that smaller company whose birthright is to 
enjoy. As some lands, like his own Italy, 
are framed for rich fertility, lands where all 
nature rejoices in production. 

They absorb at eye and ear the loveliness 
of nature, while to those less favored she 



The Story of the Poem. 5/ 

holds her beauty but half revealed, as if she 
could not trust them with her world. 

How can this regal class love? Like, 
souls brooding upon each richly-laden dis- 
covery, blind at first to anything beyond its 
beauty, until such great love becomes op- 
pressive, and could they realize, as some- 
times befalls such natures, how little they 
can do of good, how little they can bring of 
blessing to the object which they worship, 
their love would become to them not a bless- 
ing, but a curse. Hence it is given them to 
be capable of investing lifeless things with 
life from their own souls, while one by one 
their idols are discrowned as they are able 
to behold things more and more beautiful, 
until they gaze upon the Highest. One 
characteristic is always theirs, the need to 
blend themselves with external things, and 
to belong to what they worship, until that 
which they adore holds them forever in 
its grasp, past hope of escape. They lay 
aside their individuality, and abdicate their 
throne ; the creator yields to the creature ; 



52 The Story of the Poem. 

they give life to others, but they lose their 
Own. 

There is another class of natures that, 
looking at beauty no less eagerly, refer 
each form of outward loveliness to some 
related loveliness within their own souls, 
believing it but the outward manifestation 
of an inner consciousness, the physical reali- 
zation of an intellectual dream. 

The homage that others direct outward 
they turn inward, and wonder that external 
circumstances can depress the soul, which 
can laugh at fate, and, stamped with individ- 
uality and unfettered by the elemental life 
of earth, can soar to Heaven's complexest 
essence, equal to being all. 

Can this indeed be true, and is our race 
really vindicated by the ascent of these lofty 
souls whom we, one day, may follow even 
with our more bounded wills ? 

But how sad it is to find that minds of 
the first order may be enervated by certain 
moods that counsel them to slumber and in- 
action, instead of bidding them stoop to 



The Story of the Poem. 53 

task themselves for the good of mankind 
when life and time are in accord for action, 
because, forsooth, the occasion is not suited 
to display all their powers. " Why do so 
small a deed ? Wait till the grand adven- 
ture offer ! " 

And there is something yet worse that may 
happen, for the soul may be filled with a 
desire to put forth all its powers at once, to 
reach beyond mortal limits, and to force into 
time the work of eternity ; to be Csesar or 
nothing ; to refuse a part if the whole be 
not placed within its grasp. 1 

Such is Sordello ; but who sees the plague- 
spot on him as he loiters here ? 

Born with the new century, in the midst 
of the glow and flowering beauty that are 
spreading from the barbarism of the past, 
as witnessed to by a stray Greek, now and 
then wandering through Florence, the pre- 

1 The effort to realize the impossible, the search for 
new excitement, became incessant, till thought and ca- 
price, judgment and fantasy, became indistinguishable. — 
11 King Louis of Bavaria," London Spectator. 



$4 The Story of the Poem. 

cursor of a glory that a later age shall 
bring ; fortunate should be Sordello, and 
who sees now the plague-spot ? And yet it 
is there, and though for a while we may 
cover it from view, it shall some day work 
woe to one for whom there is yet much of 
pleasantness in his daily life. 

He can never remember when he has not 
dwelt at Goito, that castle set in the marsh- 
land, which belongs to Adelaide, Ecelin's 
Tuscan wife. He has known no other 
world, but this has been his own, to wander 
through and loiter in at will, so he do not 
enter the northern rooms, where Adelaide's 
apartments are. Here he is attended by 
foreign serving-women, who have been kind 
to the lonely boy. 

And for a time the day's life was enough 
for Sordello, who sucked the sweets of 
earthly pleasures and wreathed each new dis- 
covery with childish fantasies, seeking to 
put something of his own rich life into life- 
less things, that they might become in some 
sense his fellows. They appear with aspects 



The Story of the Poem. 55 

never quite the same, depicted as his fancy 
wills, which sometimes bestows upon famil- 
iar things grotesque shapes, though keeping 
a grave regard through all. Each was re- 
lated to each ; the house-leek on the roof 
had some bond that allied it with the proud 
chieftain, who came one day with his archer- 
train to the lodge, and strode clanking up 
the stair to those chambers that were closed 
to Sordello. 

Like a spider he spun the web of his fan- 
cies over all, and swung gayly upon the 
threads that were produced from his own 
fertile imagination. And if he were selfish 
in his pleasures, who had ever taught him 
that others might gladly share his joy ? And 
when chance destroyed his pretty fancies, as 
must needs happen since the world is always 
ready to sweep away such webs ; if the 
March winds beat down a heron's nest, or a 
fawn fell from a crag to die, could such 
things break the charm that held the boy 
enthralled ? 

Time brought at last to Sordello what the 



56 



The Story of the Poem. 



world should have taught him, namely, the 
true relationship between himself and his 
companions, whom, although the glamour 
has departed, he cannot yet wholly renounce, 
since they have once afforded him delight. 
If, however, he now try to recall the poppy's 
gifts, he sees that it is but a poppy after all ; 
no longer some enchanted creature, which 
felt with him, as he with it. Why should 
he distrust the evidence of sense? 'Tis but 
a poppy. Then speaks the new-born judg- 
ment, declaring it to be of little use to dis- 
cern the attributes of others, if destitute of 
attributes one's self. Or even if it were of 
use, if one could only possess some special 
office that was one's very own ! Or if not 
that, at least his soul craved some justifica- 
tion for the wish to circumscribe and con- 
centrate, rather than increase, the sum of 
actual pleasure, and prove, beyond a doubt, 
that mere sympathy suffices, and that one 
can enjoy delights by proxy. 

Alas for Sordello, if he reason thus ! For 
from the beginning love is whole and true, 



The Story of the Poem. 57 

and is sure of its own truth, if of nothing 
else ; it will not endure to have its face 
gazed upon by a crowd that cannot know 
the deep pulses of its heart. Its very inabil- 
ity to minister worthily to what it worships 
only increases its strength of feeling, and 
exalts the idol it adores far above itself, and 
exalts it gladly. But souls like Sordello's, if 
they are coerced and shamed, yet still retain 
their power of will, care but little, and com- 
fort themselves in some mysterious fashion, 
although they are constantly peering forth 
to see if others approve of their claims, and 
will utter for them the thoughts they can- 
not themselves express. Such minds as 
this must always be in the presence of a 
crowd. 

11 Vanity," says Naddo, who is the person- 
ification of general common-sense and aver- 
age public opinion. 

But how shall the lonely Sordello find a 
public ? Forth comes, not only every painted 
warrior from the arras, every stone girl from 
the fountain, not only Adelaide, whom once, 



5<5 The Story of the Poem. 

being astray in the castle, he had surprised, 
as she sat reading, a fair maiden at her 
knee ; not only these, but the whole outside 
world as he had imaged it from song and 
story and, perhaps, from dreams ; its char- 
acteristics, such as he had fancied them and 
transferred them to tree and flower, not 
thinking any of them sufficient to bestow 
upon a man, — these now stood forth inde- 
pendent and alone. Strength, wisdom, 
grace disengaged themselves, and he began 
dimly to conceive of a sort of human life, 
or at least his brain teemed with life-like 
figures. But on what shall his attention be 
fixed ? Are these figures merely to testify 
to the movements of Sordello's soul, terrible 
or sweet? Each one lives his own life, 
boasts of his own share of happiness, and 
stands alone somewhere, where his desires 
are easiest attained. But these are no 
longer desires which are easy to be realized, 
as were those of his forest-creatures; con- 
trasts and combinations are presented by this 
company so suddenly evoked, — combina- 



The Story of the Poem. 59 

tions which are prized by them who are, per- 
haps, to become judges of his own desires. 
Shall he suffer this crowd of his own crea- 
tions to win control, to arbitrarily give value 
to what he has lived without, and never felt 
the lack of ? What matters it ? A deeper 
power has rendered Sordello discontented 
with the woodland sights which lately so en- 
wrapped him, and he is absorbed in studying 
the characters and purposes of the human 
fancies which he has called into being, and 
whose artificial joys he accepts, not as he 
views them, but that, employing each shape 
to estimate the value of the others, he may 
be enabled to enter into a multitude of 
authorized pleasures, as once he blent him- 
self with tree and flower, and even more 
completely, surely, than with them. Each 
of these creatures, who is, in a fashion, 
Sordello himself, is capable of great deeds ; 
one day he will accomplish such, though 
now he must dwell with dreams ; yet by their 
aid he will find self-expression, an instru- 
ment serviceable in the future. Why should 



60 The Story of the Poem. 

he not be the peer of Ecelin, who, he hears, 
is become the Emperor's viceroy ? Surely 
he can wield a brand as well. He makes 
the trial, but failing, returns to those easier 
dreams of future triumphs, which fancy can 
portray at will. 

Thus he lives, no longer free from care, 
but comforted for his deprivations, fitting 
himself by anticipation to play his part 
nobly in the future, when great barons shall 
do him reverence, and great cities witness 
his triumph. 

Who grudges time spent for such ends ? 
Rather labor to concentrate qualities, se- 
lected from far and near, and testing them, 
compress the finest into one perfection, and 
grasp the whole at once. 

And thus he treated his phantasms ; set-^ 
ting aside the simpler, and combining traits, 
he formed one or two characters that took 
up into themselves the virtues of humanity, 
and these in turn were reduced to one all- 
powerful and all -noble. Whose is this 
transcendent figure ? Can it be Frederick, 



The Story of the Poem. 61 

of whom the bowmen talked ? Is the juice 
which he knows is bubbling in the stalk of 
yonder grape-vine some Saracenic wine 
which the Caesar is drinking with the Mira- 
moline ? 1 Are those hazel nuts, perchance, 
the dates upon the bough that John of 
Brienne sent to hasten the sailing of the 
crusading squadron, as of old Cato held up 
the ripe figs in the Roman Senate House to 
show how near Rome's rival, Carthage, lay ? 
Is it in truth the Caesar ? But how difficult 
for harsh sights and sounds to come from 
the sad world to one who must dwell in per- 
fect serenity, since his least look or word is 
mighty to control, and his right hand wields 
the thunderbolt ! But thunder would be 
needless if the multitude would but listen to 
the song of the minstrel ; why should not 
this all-perfect being be the Poet ? And so, 
half emperor, half minstrel, he lived his life ; 
only vile things troubled him, and these in 

1 A Moslem prince, whose territory waa situated in 
Northern Africa. Miramoline is another form of the 
name, which is a Spanish corruption of a Moorish title. 



62 The Story of the Poem. 

thought he slew ; while other fancies he con- 
trolled, and others yet he placed in seats of 
honor, enthroned a little lower than him- 
self. 

Like many before and after him, Sor- 
dello had found Apollo ! He would be a 
poet, although as yet he was forced to steal 
from others, and to appear in a poetic array 
that was but a sad patchwork. In the rare 
June days he climbed the ravines, where the 
sparkling runnels slipped over clattering 
pebbles, through the green walls of lindens 
roofed with vines, whence emerging, he be- 
held long lines of trees which closed into a 
magic forest, still, as of old, full of sweet 
surprises. 

Gradually he sees the Pythons perish be^ 
fore him ; obstacles are overcome ; but the 
maids, his Delian priestesses, linger still ; 
more or less loving or disdainful, they join 
in adoring Apollo. But where is the 
Daphne, the beloved of the God ? 

He hears the serving-women gossip of the 
probable marriage of Ecelin's daughter, 



The Story of the Poem. 63 

Palma, with Richard of St. Boniface, the 
Guelfic prince, that thus political feuds may 
be appeased. " But," they add, " Palma 
will have none of him ! " 

And so the lady who scorns other mates 
seems most worthy of Sordello, and becomes 
the Daphne of his dreams. 

Time wears on, though Fate delays to 
provide the stage and the audience Sordello 
desires. He grows pale and restless in his 
enforced quiet, weary of inaction. Time 
flies, but he remains the same. None come 
to him. Adelaide is in Mantua, whence 
Taurello has departed. Oh, let but Freder- 
ick come, and let matter be found for that 
minstrelsy which has been lured from Sicily 
and the young Emperor's court, and which, 
like the double outflow of a drinking-cup, 
sparkles over the thirsty land, to Provence 
on the north and thus far to the south ! 

Ah, what a way this is to tell men of 
what is going on about them, recording it in 
the very tongue which they speak daily, as 
the Troubadours do, while in their turn the 



64 The Story of the Poem. 

Trouveres proclaim the wonder, and explain 
it to their hearers, until the House of Ro- 
mano is famed throughout the world ! Such 
was Taurello's purpose when he introduced 
the poetic games, the Courts of Love and 
Song, into Lombardy ; and Adelaide, in her 
turn, now summons one at Mantua, when a 
sudden accident, like a flash of light, opens 
Sordello's eyes to the true work of life. 



BOOK II. 





i 



T is a pleasant spring morning, 
and Sordello is sure that the day- 
will bring him to the lady of his 
dreams. She is there in the whispering pine 
woods, and he has but to seek her. Gayly 
he sets forth; the great morass sparkles 
wide around him in the sunshine, and 
Palma's form floats vaguely before his eyes ; 
the marshy ground yields beneath his tread, 
lakes spreading as he moves ; Palma enters 
the wood ; she will emerge on the other side, 
and crowds, and St. Boniface also, will see 
that she loves him. One more screen of 
pines is passed, and lo ! Mantua lies before 
him, and upon the green plain without the 
walls cluster real men and women about a 
gorgeous pavilion. But do they all rush to 
adore Sordello ? Not so ; and yet his fan- 
cies were not wholly vain, for there sits 



66 The Story of the Poem. 

Palma, seen in the pavilion as the curtains 
fall aside. Now he believes that his hour 
had come ; — yet not so ; — for Eglamor, 
the best minstrel of St. Boniface, steps for- 
ward to conclude with his song the Court of 
Love. He sings the praise of Elys, the 
lady of his love, in whose honor they name 
the new string just fastened to his lute, and 
all the hearers burst forth into applause. 
But spite of the beauty of the song, Sordello 
believes himself capable of surpassing it, of 
giving it a more fitting ending ; and scarcely 
have the shouts died away when he seizes a 
lute, and filling up the outline Eglamor had 
drawn, makes it living with the glow of his 
own ardent imagination. On flies the song, 
barely able to keep pace with the rushing 
action, until Naddo is aghast. He is like 
some Egyptian, who, goading a bull with 
his sharp prong, suddenly sees him turn his 
head, and beholds beneath his tongue the 
scarabaeus, the mystic sign that marks the 
sacred apis. The people shout for joy; 
Sordello shrinks, but is sustained by the 



The Story of the Poem. 6y 

sight of Adelaide, at her side the maid of 
the north chamber, the Palma and Daphne 
of his dreams. How fair she is with her 
blue eyes and locks of gold ! and as she 
unwinds a scarf from her neck, and lays 
it upon his shoulders, Sordello's senses fail, 
and he knows no more, until he awakens in 
his old home, his forehead crowned, and 
Palma's gift about him, while on the floor 
beside him lies a splendid vesture, the prize 
of victory. The kindly serving - women 
gather around him, and praise him for a 
youth so spent as to fit him for such deeds, 
and they tell him how Eglamor, over- 
whelmed by defeat, has died, and that he 
has been chosen to be Palma's minstrel, and 
has been brought home by the Jongleurs in 
a body. 

Sordello, who hitherto had only perceived, 
now rose up to think ; he passed a week in 
living over again in memory all the delight- 
ful event. What wonderful thing had he 
then done ? Blind was the other not to see, 
as quickly as he had done, the relative im- 



68 The Story of the Poem. 

portance of each part. But would he, Sor- 
dello, have ever turned from Elys, to sing 
of her for the pleasure of song itself ? 
True, the bits of verse did help him to find a 
new beauty in himself, leading his thought 
up to many a hoard of fancies. Why 
should such a performance win applause 
from men if they, too, had fancies ? Was it 
possible that they found a beauty in the 
song itself ? " If," he thinks, " they can 
find in the poem any such beauty as I can, 
who in my fancy have lived what then I 
sang, who, in my dreams, have enjoyed 
what now I praise ; if they can do that, they 
must hold me, who could make them do it, 
for a very god indeed ! Or it may be that 
some one like Eglamor, who, if beneath me, 
is above them, may have set a stamp upon 
our work, so that men believe and worship 
what they neither truly know nor delight in. 
They may, too, have fancies of their own, 
which will not come at their beck, but are 
undefined until song links them together, 
and renders them distinct and palpable." 



The Story of the Poem. 69 

Suddenly the wind is hushed, the noon- 
day sky is clouded, and Sordello hears the 
tramp of footsteps through the pine wood, 
as the minstrel company bear the body of 
Eglamor to his last resting-place, calm in 
death, a few flowers in his hand. He was 
Sordello's opposite ; for him verse was a 
temple-worship, a ceremony that unveiled 
the sanctuary, nor did he ever repine at the 
effort needed to stand therein, or at finding 
much that was blank and uncertain at the 
shrine before which he was wont to kneel, 
until the power responded, vouchsafing him 
some sight or sound which he made his own, 
and fixed, beautiful forever, in poetic form. 
And these were a part of his life, unloosed 
at pleasure, to soothe pain or care, while he 
faltered like Perseus when he set free An- 
dromeda, so far these fancies seemed beyond 
himself. Yet he was no rare genius, trans- 
figuring in every element at will, but rather 
some patient gnome, who, shut up in some 
cavern with his agate cup, his seed-pearl and 
his topaz rod, finds enough to do in making 
the best disposal that he can of them. 



yo The Story of the Poem. 

And lie had loved his art, and possessing 
little of the world's wealth, had cared not 
for the world's coldness, since he had that 
sweet gift that makes all others poor, — the 
gift of song. None yet had equaled him, 
and the coming triumph had seemed to him 
so certain, his lay so fervid, unsurpassed as 
yet. 

We know the sequel, how he lost the vic- 
tory, and rank and life. Yet envy had 
sunken within him when he had listened to 
Sordello, and he tried to shout like the 
others, though not like the common sort, to 
show his pleasure, and, bending down, he 
placed his own crown beneath Sordello's, 
and kissed his successor's hand, leaving a 
tear upon it. And then he joined his band, 
who bade him sing his rival's song; he 
obeyed them, and went home. There was 
no crowd, as of yore, to welcome him at his 
coming; all were gone to escort the new 
minstrel, his rival. And so he lay down to 
sleep, well knowing that in the morning he 
must rise to confront the problem of his 



The Story of the Poem. 7/ 

changed estate ; and death, less cruel than 
his friends, took him before the dawning. 

Then the minstrels, who had heard of 
Sordello's romantic home, and believed, 
with Naddo, that one would willingly rest 
far from the scene of one's defeat, had borne 
the dead poet to Goito, and Sordello, rising 
a degree higher yet in soul, laid his own 
crown upon the breast of the dead, and 
committed the charge of the minstrel's dust 
and of his fame to the ferns and pines. 
Nor was his prayer fruitless ; for a trefoil 
floweret, that whitens ere noontide and is 
swept away by the breeze of evening, bears 
still the name of Eglamor. 

It was a month of May, and Sordello, 
robed and filleted, lay with his lute upon 
the flowery turf; spite of the glow of his 
poet-life, something within him seemed to 
whisper that this fortune could not endure. 
He had sought to learn something of his 
birth and station, and he had been told this. 
Years before, Ecelin, engaged in a feud at 
Vicenza, had fired the quarter of the town in 



J2 The Story of the Poem. 

which his enemies dwelt, although that very- 
night his son Ecelin had been born there. 
The latter, with his mother, was with diffi- 
culty rescued by Elcorte, an archer. The 
wrath of those who missed the greater prey 
vented itself yet more fiercely upon that 
within their grasp, and it was said that 
among those who perished were the wife and 
only son of Taurello Salinguerra. Then 
the archer's deed seemed daring enough to 
merit large reward, and since he himself 
had fallen, his son had been carefully nur- 
tured at Goito, to which place Adelaide had 
escaped. And this archer's son was Sor- 
dello ! Apollo vanishes, and there remains 
a low-born youth, who has just been named 
his lady's minstrel. Is this he who, as our 
poet wildly fancies, is to be proclaimed the 
monarch of the world ? 

For Sordello, who had been a slave to 
longings, suppressed save in his dreams, not 
daring to claim his desired mastery until he 
had decked himself with strength, grace, 
and wisdom to fit him for his throne, has 



The Story of the Poem. j$ 

now resolved to claim his kingdom. He 
has determined, relying upon his will * 
alone, to do his best with what he has, and 
let the rest go by. The die is cast ; never 
again can Sordello be to himself one of the 
many, nor feel that for him and for the 
many there is a common law, since Apollo's 
presence has exempted him from that. Men 
now are no more his equals than were bud 
and flower in the olden time ; although in- 
active himself, he is greater than those who 
act, since each stoops to his star, to acquire 
from it his function ; he has gained the 
same result with meaner mortals, who are 
trained to express their one ruling thought, 
since he is capable of comprehending all 
ideas, and can take power from Richard, or 
grace from Palma, and mix these qualities, 
or enjoy them separately, as best pleases 
him ; so he is never cramped or restricted by 

1 In this, as in other places in the poem, Mr. Brown- 
ing seems to use the word will, as equivalent to imagi- 
nation, and the capacity to realize in himself all his 
images. 



j 4 The Story of the Poem. 

any specialty ; never stamped strong, and 
so compelled to turn all his energies to 
strength, or wise, and forced to give evi- 
dence of wisdom. Which means that there 
is no one Idea, which floats star-like above 
and before him, luring him on to its reali- 
zation. " Fortunate," he cries, " that my 
flesh never strove to emulate so various a 
soul! Took no casual mould of the first 
fancy, and lay, clogged by it, averse to 
change ; but has left her free to range, and, 
cast into the shade, hinders but little, if it 
cannot help ! Let my soul range freely, ex- 
pressing the quintessence of all beauty by 
being conscious of it itself ; but surely the 
World, which can wonder at men who may 
themselves be filled with wonder, the World 
which loves at second-hand, and makes idols 
of those who bow in their turn before some 
idol, surely this World, when it shall behold 
me, must bow in unexampled worship ! " 

(Dear Monarch, notice how wide the 
breach here. Look down upon all men if 
you will, but why tell them your opinion of 
them?) 



The Story of the Poem. j$ 

" Ah," thinks Sordello, " the world shall 
bow to ine, who from afar see all the joys of 
man, or great or small, nor taste of them 
myself. I have no machine for exercising 
my will ; mere consciousness be mine. Let 
them perceive what I could do, and believe 
in a mastery proven by my song, which shall 
show that all they are or would be, I am. I 
take no pains to change anything, vex them 
with no new forms, but give them just what 
they desire, that and no more ; so that in 
me each shall behold and love that love 
which leads his own soul to perfection." 

Thus Sordello chose, for his life's portion, 
song, not deeds. He put aside the emperor 
and remained the poet alone. Verse only 
for him! Strength should not seek to ex- 
press itself in effort, nor grace in outward 
beauty, nor uttered wisdom control unseemly 
moods. It should be song alone. The 
blood and fire of the year, which so concern 
the world, are to him but a pastime, to wile 
away the hours until he shall step forth 
upon the stage. 



y6 The Story of the Poem. 

And now that all is outlined, Sordello 
takes his ease, until there comes a letter 
from Naddo, who entreats him to return to 
Mantua to feed a famishing world. His 
fame has gone before him, and all bid him 
welcome, while all seem to Sordello angels, 
who are to be made supremely happy by his 
song. 

Then he finds the task of singing an an- 
noyance, since he had never cared for song 
itself, but only for its effect ; of what use 
had song been in his past life, when all he 
had wished for had been praise, not the la- 
bor that earned the praise? His rhymes 
were Eglamor's ; but Naddo upholds him 
before the people, and he determines to go 
on, remembering that if failure come he can 
betake himself once more to Goito. 

We struggle with our glossaries to gain 
an idea of what the Troubadour would ex- 
press in his varied poems, but we never quite 
comprehend what there was in them that so 
moved the people, as he drew out from the 
flood of the time its elements, and tracing 



The Story of the Poem. yy 

actions backward to their source, added a 
touch or two, and made qualities men and 
women. Virtue and vice passed by in the 
persons of saint and sinner, and all the pas- 
sions were incarnated by song. Praise was 
showered upon him, his fictions were held 
for realities, and he felt a desire to realize 
something of what he sang ; to come down 
from his pedestal and accept the petty joys 
of actual life. By doing this, however, he 
would abjure the right to enjoy the quint- 
essence of all, and thus would frustrate his 
main design ; even for very love of it he 
must abjure all pleasure. He laughed ; 
what sage but perishes if he look up from 
the pages of his magic book, because at the 
very first line he finds that his art has effi- 
ciency ? 

For a while our poet left his imaginings 
to try the stuff that held his images, his 
Language. No need to tell how he wrought 
upon that language, until from the rough 
speech of the men about him he had ham- 
mered out at last a rude armor, that should 



78 The Story of the Poem. 

one day be more prized than the Roman 
panoply that had been melted to make it. 
And when it was complete he strove to use 
it. Took up an action with its actors, lived 
in each of his creatures, whom he equipped 
in the harness he had so toilsomely wrought. 
And then he bade the Mantuans listen. 
Vain attempt ! The armor broke away 
piece by piece, because perceptions, such as 
he sought to clothe with it, are unfit for a 
garb so intellectual as language. Thought 
may replace perception, but can hardly co- 
exist with it, since it is but the latter's pre- 
sentment ; offering us the whole in a series 
of parts, giving us by the successive and the 
many that which is really one and simulta- 
neous. Does the crowd lack perception? 
It painfully tacks together the thoughts into 
which Sordello has torn perception, its office 
being to reconstruct, as his is to diffuse. 

Hopeless of success, he returns to the old 
measures and sings the exploits of Montfort 
over the Albigensians. Even now he is 
not understood. His audience never guess 



The Story of the Poem. 79 

that he depicts himself in his hero, and won- 
der how he comes to know so much about 
Montfort. What, after all, does he care for 
the Mantuans ? But was he not in a way- 
forced to help them, to treat them as if they 
were peers of the images of the old Goito 
days ? He strewed fairy gold upon the mul- 
titude, but all in vain. The years went by, 
and Sordello disappeared from among men. 

The man and the poet were hopelessly 
at war within him ; the man refusing to be 
any longer fooled with fancies, while the 
poet would consecrate all his powers to 
song ; and now one nature, now the other 
had its way. But the complete Sordello, 
man and poet, had gone forever. Now he re- 
solved to put aside all but his art and com- 
pel the age to recognize a master ; now to 
forswear song, fling by his lethargy, and 
play a man's part in life. Ere he could 
decide the Mantuans interfered. Why not 
settle down there among them ? Remember 
that he was Palma's minstrel, and be glad 
to submit to established rules, nor fall into 



80 The Story of the Poem. 

extravagant absurdities like Vidal l and 
others. But when he sought to answer their 
questions, his speech had the largeness of 
divine replies, too slow in condensing them- 
selves to satisfy the citizens, with their little 
stock of opinions cut and dried, or questions 
youthfully crude. To answer questions 
asked would have been the work of a life- 
time ; he resorted to ready-made responses 
and often-repeated gestures. So his soul, 
unable to compass the whole, began to see 
less and less that was worth striving for in 
the parts. As man and poet alike he failed, 
and Naddo reproves him for not being able 
to sing a straightforward song, and persist- 
ing in trying to work out problems which, 
being no philosopher, he had better leave 
untouched. " For poetry," says Naddo, 

1 Pierre Vidal, a Troubadour, who followed Richard 
the Lion-Heart on the third crusade. He was even , 
more renowned for his extravagant behavior than for his 
poetic gifts, and was involved in many remarkable ad- 
ventures. Dante introduces him into the 26th Canto of 
the Purgatorio, putting into his mouth some verses of 
Provencal poetry. 



The Story of the Poem. 81 

u must be based on common sense. If you 
would have your songs endure, build upon 
the human heart, the general, healthy one." 
Many Naddos overwhelm him ; he yields, 
strives to conform, and fails once more. 

Meanwhile Adelaide has died, and Ecelin 
writes to Taurello that he shall never return 
to the world ; that his two sons, Ecelin and 
Alberic, are to marry the niece of Azzo and 
the daughter of St. Boniface ; that the 
Count himself is to have Palma, and thus 
peace will be made between the two con- 
tending factions. The news comes to Salin- 
guerra at Naples, where he has lately joined 
Frederick, who is to sail within the month 
for Syria. Swiftly he rides to visit his lord, 
and remonstrate with him on his course ; 
but to no purpose ; these things, says Ecelin, 
must be as he has planned. 

The country rings with the news of how 
Romano's great captain has withdrawn to 
Mantua, whither, although it is his native 
city, he never goes, unless dissatisfied with 
Ecelin. The city prepares great shows to 



82 The Story of the Poem. 

greet him, and Sordello is chosen to bid him 
welcome ; but no thoughts will come to 
him; he strolls out beyond the walls, and 
wanders aimlessly through the fields, until 
he finds himself unexpectedly at Goito, his 
old home, looking smaller than of yore, but 
more mysterious than ever. Palma, they 
tell him, has left that very day. 

Once more Sordello lay beside the foun- 
tain, and his life passed in review before 
him. Body and Intellect both had failed ; 
was it the fault of the Will ? And he flung 
his crown into the fount, and laid aside the 
scarf that all so envied him. There was no 
poet the next day at Mantua, and Taurello, 
when the Masque was over, asked vainly for 
a song. None was forthcoming, and the 
good-natured soldier accepted a bull-baiting 
instead. 




BOOK III. 

JINCE more Goito has Sordello. 
The dream is over, and nature 
effaces the print of the past ; the 
world's stain leaves our poet, and the Man- 
tuans fade from his memory. Better is it, 
he feels, to be unreyealed than half revealed. 
Of what further use, then, is will? Why 
should he feel the need to become all na- 
tures, yet retain the law of his own ? Will 
and the means of displaying it, he deter- 
mines to abjure, save any that are so dis- 
tinct that they may serve to amuse without 
tempting one to become anything. As he 
was at first, such will he now become. 

A year passed with no great change in 
Sordello, save that the eyes once bright with 
questioning were now dulled by receiving. 
He slept, but he knew that he slept. 

One dull, gray autumn day he sauntered 



84 The Story of the Poem. 

through the wood, his whole soul in har- 
mony with the aspect of nature. His youth 
and nature's both were gone. And once 
gone, youth is gone forever ; deeds passed 
by can never be achieved ; nature may re- 
new herself, but we — 

" Alas ! " sighs Sordello, " are all my 
chances forfeited? Have I not two lives 
that I may spend the one in learning how to 
live the other ? Nature may retrieve her 
losses ; my overthrow is final ! No thoughts 
of love, meeting with Elys at the even-close ; 
no hours of pleasure spent with Frederick 
and his court in gay carouse ; no triumphant 
going like the blind Doge, Dandolo, through 
conquered Byzantium ! 1 No more of peace 
or war ! Ah, these were the fragments of a 
whole, the rounds of a ladder, which I mis- 
took for the broad platform it was meant to 

1 In 1204 the Latin Conquest of Constantinople took 
place. The leaders of the so-called crusade were the 
Doge of Venice, Dandolo, and Baldwin of Flanders, with 
others of less note. The first step was to conquer the 
city in behalf of an exiled prince, the next to seize upon 
it entirely and place Baldwin on the throne. 



The Story of the Poem. 85 

lift me to. Happiness did await me ; life 
should be used to acquire ; and such deeds 
conduced to teach me by a self-revelation, 
which was mistaken for the use itself. 
What helped to that was pleasure, what de- 
layed was pain. I have laid down the lad- 
der ; I climb no more ; but the platform 
stretches above me, and joys elude me of 
which till now I never had a glimpse. The 
multitude are endowed with some being, 
however slight, distinct from what they see, 
however limited ; happiness must consist in 
feeding being by gleanings from things 
seen, in attaining the qualities of the latter, 
and thus becoming what one beholds. Such 
transmutation, the making what has been 
alien native to one's self, is the Use-of-Life. 
Ere I begin to truly exist I must include 
within myself a world I now know in spirit 
only, and then what would be left to me to 
blend with ? But already my will is master 
of the world ; yet it becomes thereby more 
alien to me, since my means are so unwor- 
thily suited to my will ; I was bound to 



86 The Story of the Poem. 

tread down forever these tantalizing joys. 
I die ; but will the rest die also ? Shall 
some future Sordello catch the clue I miss, 
which still seems at my hand, and still 
eludes my grasp ? Have I wantonly aban- 
doned the chance of solving the problem, 
and shall I, thrust aside, remain so, while 
beyond there passes a pageant that Time 
will never repeat ? Nay, rather, slake my 
thirst at any spring ! " 

And with the thought comes Naddo to 
summon the poet to Verona. He tells him 
that Ecelin has parted his wealth between 
his two sons, Ecelin and Alberic, who are to 
wed Guelfic ladies, and abides still in his 
monastery; that Palma and St. Boniface 
are betrothed ; how the Guelf s rose at Fer- 
rara, and Salinguerra, having taken revenge, 
is now besieged there by Este and St. Boni- 
face ; and how the latter, once victory is 
gained, will marry Palma, absorb Komano, 
and inaugurate better government. Sor- 
dello is wanted by Palma, who doubtless 
wishes him to prepare a song for her wed- 



The Story of the Poem. 8y 

ding-feast. And now we have arrived at 
the point where our story opens. The news 
of the Guelfic discomfiture has reached Ve- 
rona, and while the square is alive with ex- 
cited burghers, Palma and her minstrel are 
sitting, as lovers, in the secret chamber. 
Palma strives to tell him her story. Sor- 
dello's had not been the only want that 
Goito had nurtured ; Palma, destined to 
serve, as he to be served, had grown up there 
also. While Sordello had sought to lead 
nature captive, she had dreamed of some out- 
soul, for whose coming she pined, nor did 
she dare let heart and mind expand, until 
this mysterious power, for whom they grew, 
should appear to direct them. Everything 
in her life she felt must be determined by 
one who is to be to her the incarnation of 
a will, inscrutable save at one point, which 
would shine that her own powers might flow 
towards it. First whom to love, then how 
to love him. And hoping thus, from day to 
day she waited for his coming. 

Then came the Love -Court, and one 



88 The Story of the Poem. 

face burst upon her, uot seen for the first 
time. She dared not speak of her feelings, 
for, although Adelaide was silent, Palma 
felt certain that any schemes she might form 
would be frustrated by the wily Tuscan. 

Then one night the Lady died, and none 
but Palma there, to whom the dying woman 
revealed many secrets of her life. Ecelin, 
arriving just as all was over, refused to 
carry out any of the wishes of his dead wife, 
since he cared no longer for family glory, 
and was only eager to return to his monas- 
tery. But Palma, alone at Goito, sought 
how to bring herself and Sordello together, 
and rejoiced to have Taurello teach her of 
the greatness of her house, and show her 
how Romano has become fixed in Italy. 
Other families have depended upon the 
Pope, Romano has relied upon the Emperor. 

And as Adelaide 1 of Susa intrusted Pied- 

1 Adelaide of Susa, a great baroness of Lombardy, 
was a firm partisan of the Popes. Her daughter Bertha 
was the wife of the Emperor Henry IV., opponent of 
Hildebrand. 



The Story of the Poem. 89 

mont, which left to the Popes an open pas- 
sage between France and Italy, to the great 
Countess Matilda 1 of Tuscany, so should 
Palma take into her charge the Trentine, 
which the Tuscan wife of Romano had de- 
sired to hold, as affording a safe way for 
Frederick between Germany and Italy, and 
there maintain her power by Salinguerra's 
help. 

Taurello, meanwhile, had thought it expe- 
dient to temporize, and on the very day of 
the outrage at Ferrara he betrothed Palma 
to St. Boniface ; and as the latter quitted 
Verona instantly for the siege, Palma came 
directly to the latter city, and being thus 
ready to confirm or annul the compact, put 
Richard in the wrong. And now, what 
glory may not come to Sordello through this 

1 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, was a firm friend of 
Pope Gregory VII. It was at her castle of Canossa that 
the famous meeting between the Emperor Henry IV. 
and Pope Gregory took place. She bequeathed her do- 
minions to the Holy See, and the question as to the feu- 
dal homage due for them was a source of many quarrels 
between the Popes and Emperors. 



go The Story of the Poem. 

state of things ? A month since Ecelin has 
taken monkish vows, but yet Salinguerra 
cannot definitely abandon his liege lord. 
He writes to ask if he shall still hold him- 
self, as he is ready to be held, at his old 
master's orders, or if the sons of Romano are 
now the head of the House. The letter has 
been sent by Palma, and the answer is to 
be given by her. Her father refuses, once 
for all, to re-enter the world, and frees Tau- 
rello from all allegiance to himself. Lest 
Salinguerra be depressed by this, Palma has 
determined to take the place left vacant by 
her father and her brothers, and as the 
Kaiser's representative sanction the steps 
which Taurello wishes to take. She now 
urges Sordello to accompany her to Ferrara, 
whither she will go in minstrel's dress, and 
anticipating the various envoys, seek the 
presence of Salinguerra, whose brave words, 
she trusts, will teach her lover, what she be- 
lieves the truth, — that the Emperor's cause 
is his own. 

And so she leaves him. Ere the morning 



The Story of the Poem. gi 

dawns he has resolved that he will indeed 
be the gate-vein of Loinbardy's heart's- 
blood, the soul of this body. Thus will he 
conquer fate though he be doomed to live 
apart, the core of this outer crust which he 
has vitalized. 

And thus Sordello is brought to rejoice 
in the crowd's applause because one round 
of life has been achieved ; he has found that 
a soul, however great, is insufficient to its 
own happiness, both in bodily organs and 
in the skill to manifest the imagination by 
means of them ; and again to show to men 
that imagination, and oblige them to recog- 
nize that which is hidden by what has been 
revealed. He has learned also that, when 
the last struggle was over, the will which 
had been bidden to abdicate its throne and 
would not, might yet be allowed to reign, 
and would permit him to enjoy mankind. 
He sees now that it is his true duty to in- 
spire the people to action, not merely to in- 
vite them to behold him acting the parts 
which should be theirs to play. 




BOOK IV. 

jjEANTIME Ferrara is torn by the 
struggles of contending factions. 
Taurello has held a conference 
with the Emperor's envoy, whom he dis- 
misses in apparent haste to make way for 
the deputies of the Eastern League, who are 
accompanied by the Papal Legate. The 
carrochs x of the various cities are drawn up 
in the square, which is filled with people 
and gay with flaunting banners. The cit- 
izens have striven to put as good a face as 
possible upon their disastrous condition, and 
they have crowded together to discuss af- 
fairs: some rejoice that Eeelin's banner is 
missing, but they are reminded that magic 



1 The carroch, or carroccio, was a huge wagon in which 
the standard of the city was carried into battle. It also 
bore a cross and a great bell. It was placed in the centre 
of the army, and zealously guarded from risk of capture. 



The Story of the Poem. 93 

arts may help him now, as they have done in 
his wife's lifetime, to a knowledge of what 
passes in his absence. We enter now a gar- 
den full of southern trees and blossoms, 
and adorned with statues, brought by Salin- 
guerra from Messina to please his Sicilian 
bride, as was also the font at Goito, which 
he gave to Adelaide. But these statues are, 
like their owner, full of active life, able to 
right themselves. Here he holds Boniface 
imprisoned ; here the envoys must come to 
sue for grace ; and here we find Sordello, 
who has visited Este's camp and seen the en- 
voys' march and the Papal train. Not now as 
when he held himself aloof, save for the fan- 
tastic tie he was willing to acknowledge ; the 
more he regarded them, the less satisfied he 
now felt with the part he was playing. Was 
this the humanity he had raved over, and 
wished to become one with ? Are all men 
notable alike? As well expect to find all 
Taurello's trees one pine. A pine does rise 
here and there, the rest are lowly shrubs. 
How few the chiefs of men ! And yet the 



94 The Story of the Poem. 

people grow, grow ever, until it seems as if 
each leader lost his individuality and be- 
came merely the head of absent Paduans or 
Tyrolese. While thus he meditated old 
memories returned with new effect, and be- 
fore he was aware he and mankind were 
one ; and yet the people seemed beneath 
him. What cared he for a mind here and 
there to repay him, if all the rest were base ? 
Somehow he must establish an equilibrium, 
and secure for the many the long-possessed 
privileges of the few. He should think first 
of men and of their wants : when these were 
satisfied, then he should find room for the 
finer qualities of his own soul to act. He 
wondered now that when he had dreamed of 
ruling mankind he had never thought that 
he might benefit them also and thus swell 
with theirs his sum of pleasure. His first 
aim must be to render mankind happy ; and 
now he began to have a dim idea of the im- 
port of warring parties which so abused 
each other. This was the secret of the con- 
test, the master-spring ; which of the two 



The Story of the Poem. 95 

could do most good to the people ; which 
best knew how to do it ? He has an inter- 
view with Salinguerra, but leaves him more 
perplexed than before. He strays about the 
streets, looking at the misery that war has 
wrought, " to serve," as he says, " Tau- 
rello's ends." He forgets that it is equally 
to serve Azzo's or St. Boniface's. He 
stands among the throng about the Veronese 
carroch, and being recognized as a minstrel, 
is called upon to sing a song of Sordello's. 
Then he rejoices that this noble gift is his, 
and having sung, turns to a youth beside 
him, to whom he declares his name. The 
youth is Palma in disguise, and she leads 
him away from the place. 

Taurello has seen the envoys of Emperor 
and Pope, and now he sits alone. On the 
wall of the chamber the green and yellow 
colors of Romano flank the two-headed 
eagle of the Empire ; on the table lie the im- 
perial rescript and badge which may make 
him the Vicar of Frederick in Northern 
Italy. But his thoughts are strangely drawn 



g6 The Story of the Poem. 

to Sordello, the last, as he is the first ser- 
vant of Romano. How great the contrast ! 
The minstrel's thirty years spent in doing 
nothing, this day's journey their greatest 
event ; how lean and old they have left him, 
how awkward and ill at ease he looks ; while 
Salinguerra, sixty years old, after a life 
spent in camp and court, with Popes and 
Emperors, is quick, graceful, splendid. Be- 
side the Kaiser's rescript lies a letter from 
Ecelin, emphasizing his withdrawal from ac- 
tive life. Shall he fill Romano's place, and 
reign as the Emperor's Vicar ? 

He recalls his past life; how, when yet 
a boy, he had been robbed of his prom- 
ised bride by St. Boniface's father, who had 
wedded her to Azzo of Este. He had then 
betaken himself to Sicily and the court of 
Henry of Swabia, whence he afterwards re- 
turned, bringing with him a fair southern 
bride, Retrude, of the imperial Hohenstauf en 
line, for whom he built a palace and pre- 
pared broad gardens more noble than any 
Ferrara could display; and when his son 



The Story of the Poem. gy 

was born to him, men said that he would 
visit Mantua and assert his power there also. 
And now the Guelfs, fearful of losing place, 
rise in arms, and the Ghibelline quarter of 
the city was fired in a fray in which Ecelin 
had endeavored to put down the insurrection. 
Taurello then lost wife and child, and became 
henceforth fully absorbed in the fortunes 
of Romano, whom he supports, aided by 
Adelaide. His course is quite incomprehen- 
sible to Henry, as to his brother Philip, for 
they value Salinguerra far higher than his 
lord. Otto IV., seeing Ecelin harsh and 
unready, Taurello facile and sparkling, con- 
cludes that his predecessors' judgments have 
been influenced by outside show, and so 
fixes his choice upon the former. 

Such is Salinguerra, who, with no thought 
of graces, took them as they came ; learned 
to speak Greek, because Greeks are hard to 
hold to contracts ; learned Arabic, because 
that helped him to master astrology, in which 
he assisted Adelaide, who relied for much of 
her power on magic : controlled Frederick ; 



98 The Story of the Poem. 

patronized art ; sang, played upon the lute, 
and was a mighty warrior in battle. 

Salinguerra, who wished to look into the 
minds of men that he might learn their pur- 
poses and capabilities, displayed himself so 
far as was needful to make men display 
themselves. 

Sordello cared to know men merely that 
he might display himself, and valued them 
only as they drew out or expressed that self 
in him. 

As time passed on, men noticed that 
whenever Taurello was absent the power of 
Romano waned, nor could he be prevailed 
upon always to recall his adviser ; his wife 
was his chief support, and when she died 
destruction threatened. Then Taurello once 
more assumed his old part, restored things 
by a touch, and struck Este down. Men 
remembered now the old hate he bore to 
Azzo, which of late had been prudently con- 
cealed, for not only Azzo's fall, but the ruin 
of the whole House of Este was what he 
desired. 



The Story of the Poem. gg 

He stands thoughtful in the window, and 
there rises up before him that whole night of 
fire and blood, when all he loved was lost, 
and he determines that Ecelin, whose wife 
and child were saved, shall help him to 
revenge. He can be Vicar if he choose ; 
but to what end ? His life must wear 
itself out in the roar and foam of adventure, 
nor will any trace of him remain. Fate has 
ordained that he shall make others power- 
ful, not himself, nor can he bear to thrust 
Ecelin 's children from their father's place. 

Sordello and Palma stand together by an 
extinguished watch-fire ; he entreats her to 
tell him how to play a man's part in the 
world; to show him if somehow good may 
be the final goal behind all the ill he sees ; 
shall he believe in Salinguerra, who seems 
to be all that Sordello should be ? But he 
does so many deeds of violence ; do the 
Guelfs commit such acts also ? And Palma 
shows him that the Guelfs are indeed no 
more just or gentle. Then he feels that 
since both parties are so evil in what they 



wo The Story of the Poem. 

do, he is rather worthy of praise than 
blame for having done nothing, since, if he 
has accomplished no good, at least he has 
wrought no ill. And he fancies that there 
may be a third cause, which it is left to him 
to discover. Here a bystander bids him 
take as the subject of a ballad the famous 
Crescentius. Sordello has never heard of 
him, and the speaker, who was once a friar, 
goes on to tell him how that man had defied 
both Pope and Emperor, had been called 
Roman Consul, had trusted the people, and 
wished to restore the vanished Republic. 
Pope and Emperor combined against hhn, 
and he was crucified in the Forum. Sor- 
dello is called upon to sing to the people a 
song of Rome. 

And in truth Rome seemed to him to be 
the one point of light that was to illuminate 
the world ; all other cities but strove to re- 
semble it ; Guelf and Ghibelline sought, 
not to change, but to possess it ; then let 
Rome advance! It was Rome as she 
seemed to the ignorant Sordello, and Rome 



The Story of the Poem. 101 

was the cause he longed to uphold : the 
ancient Rome, the Rome of the Civil Law, 
of the Capitol, of St. Angelo ; where the 
new is brought into harmony with the old, 
the temporal with the spiritual ; law, order, 
religion, all from the type of that power that 
shall give its rights unto mankind. 

" Let us have Rome again ! " cries Sor- 
dello. " I am the one fated to rebuild it ; 
such a future is the justification of such a 
past ! " And full of this thought he rushes 
out to make it living among the people, to 
let their facts complete his dream. 



BOOK V. 




UT the evening sees Sordello in 
another mood. His dream of 



Rome without an Emperor has 
faded. The people whom he has seen, 
drunken, ignorant, brutal, are scarcely the 
ideal citizens of his ideal city. Yet he should 
remember how great of old was the labor of 
building the Roman state ; how mankind 
has toiled upward from the cave-dwellers to 
the workers in brick and stone. How use 
came first, and how art then followed. The 
work moved on step by step ; there was no 
possibility of overleaping details and gain- 
ing the full glory at a bound, when every 
change in building - materials exacted an 
architect and an age. The men to whom a 
maple log was a luxury hardly cared for 
priceless Mauritanian tables. 1 

1 Citrus - wood tables sent from Northern Africa 
brought fabulous prices in the luxurious days of Rome. 



The Story of the Poem. 103 

" Better," you say, " to merge all common 
workmen in the master, all epochs in one." 
Then indeed the sudden city might bask in 
the daylight, but its citizens would be quite 
incapable of comprehending or enjoying the 
privileges that had fallen to their lot. 

" Enough of Rome," thinks Sordello. 
" Fate has added another to the list of beau- 
tiful things that Sordello cannot do." 

Thus sitting, lonely and despondent, he 
hears within his heart a voice that speaks : 
" God, Sordello, has given to man two 
sights — one of the perfected plan of time, 
one of the moment's work ; what have you 
lost save the hope of taking that supreme 
step, the knowledge of which was vouchsafed 
to you, that you might have courage to take 
your own step, and to abide by that, leaving 
the end to hope ? All that is gone is the 
glory that crowns the labor, and which, 
could you thus speedily compass, you were 
God, not man. The first step is still yours 
to take, and you are to learn this truth, that 
mankind can accomplish more than any in- 



104 The Story of the Poem. 

dividual man ; but there must be some one 
to take the first step. There is no perfect 
poet, for one excels in strength, and one in 
grace. So it is in the world at large. Are 
you the first to give a definite form to the 
many ? Was there not, centuries ago, one 
who devised an apparition in the midst of 
that loose, perpetual unrest? A sudden, 
splendid flower who drew all things to him- 
self, the child of joyous life, the embodi- 
ment of strength ; — Charlemagne has lived. 
So strong and grand and calm, he seems un- 
feeling in his superb confidence and content. 
He formed of the multitude one magnificent 
body ; is it the province of Hildebrand x to 
vitalize that body with a soul ? Is the State 
strength, and the Church knowledge ? For 
three hundred years the two powers have 
appeared to touch each other ; the great 

1 Hildebrand, or Gregory VII. , one of the most fa- 
mous of the Popes. He enforced the celibacy of thej 
clergy, and attempted to deprive laymen of all part in 
investing the clergy with their offices. He lived in the 
latter part of the eleventh century. Contemporary and 
opponent of the Emperor Henry IV. 



The Story of the Poem, 105 

Caesars bear up the Crowns, 1 the iron of 
Aix, the silver of Milan, and the gold of 
Rome ; the great Popes lift up the Keys. 
But how do the great and small unite ? 
The Crusaders seek to create strength by 
other aid than strength alone ; a spiritual 
force is behind them ; it is a safe plan ; as 
also is that of the League, which opposes 
force by force ; while from the preaching of 
the clergy may come the possibility of super- 
seding strength. Who, strong in being 
feeling yet unfeeling too, shall bring in 
the next age ? No, Sordello believes Hil- 
debrand's task is not yet accomplished ; 
there is still work for him to do. In 
thought he wrenches asunder the scaffold of 
Charles ; but the work starts back, and he 
feels that he can only confirm and better, 
not destroy ; that strength and knowledge 

1 The crown of the German kingdom taken at Aachen, 
of Lombardy at Milan, of the Empire at Rome. They 
were said to be respectively of silver, iron, and gold. 
Not quite in the order of the text. The terms were prob- 
ably employed symbolically, as indicating the estimation 
in which each was held at that time. 



io6 The Story of the Poem. 

must work together; that the warrior and 
the poet should no longer be dissevered in 
him, and since he is ambitious of remodel- 
ing the world, let him go to Salinguerra, 
and secure his aid to keep the Guelfs in 
power." 

He finds Taurello and Palma together ; 
he has his chance at last, and he makes the 
most of it. But after all his rhetoric avails 
only to show that he would turn Salinguerra 
to the papal side ; that the God of Goito 
has dwindled into a Guelfic partisan ; and 
his old fault recurs : he cannot help look- 
ing at himself while he is speaking, and 
wondering how his hearers are impressed, as 
he shows the great chief how necessary it is 
that Lombardy should get rid of her barons. 
Meanwhile Taurello, famed for tact, a man 
who, careless of phrases, never lacked the 
right one, looked as if all were as it should 
be, and he were interested in every point. 
His only answer is, " Does poetry turn hair 
white sooner than politics ? " 

Then the bitter truth flashes upon Sor- 



The Story of the Poem. joy 

dello that fancies have so weakened his 
power, that he no longer possesses earnest- 
ness, nor the wish to work, nor yet the 
power to express how urgent is the need of 
working. He sees the base years drag on 
into the future, while he writes many poems, 
no doubt, and will be mourned when dead as 
one whose best survives him. Better tear out 
the heart of the truth at once ! Once more 
he begins to speak : the bells of the car- 
rochs sound from the square below ; Taurello 
lifts the imperial badge, and smilingly asks 
Palma if this will satisfy her ; if he shall 
set Boniface free, submit their strength to 
the Pope's knowledge, and bestow the Em- 
peror's badge upon Azzo. And, laughing, 
he wonders who will hereafter censure the 
minstrel for lack of wisdom ; surely this 
speech would have been greatly preferable 
to the bull-fight he had lately been forced to 
witness. 

But contempt saved what vanity had well- 
nigh destroyed, and Sordello now found 
words to speak out his thoughts ; and he 



io8 The Story of the Poem 

closes with the bitter expression of his de- 
spair that he must not only resign to Tau- 
rello the post he had longed to fill, but must 
see the baron scorn to take the place. Then 
the old Goito days return once more ; he is 
Apollo and knows that the minstrel is in- 
deed a king, and that if he fail of asserting 
his proper royalty, it is not because the roy- 
alty is lacking, but that he has been thrust 
aside as inexpert to fill the poet's throne. 
He has seen too late that kingship does not 
lie in the forms he would imitate ; these he 
could but copy. Include the multitude, and 
let it include you in turn ; so shall you fill 
your place, to make way in another age for 
yet another sovereign. Before song, deeds 
made up the world, but thought is the soul 
of action, and the poet presents to us the 
masque of life, and shows its varied forms, 
and allots to each its praise or blame. The 
poet turns ends attained to means, and from 
the old structures he erects the new, as Ven- 
ice plunders every clime to make her Duomo 
splendid. To the Guelfic cause, which he 



The Story of the Poem, 109 

believes the People's, he would win Salin- 
guerra, who, long past surprise, turns to 
Palma, and says briefly, " You love him, 
and you know your father's will, who would, 
by giving up much of his territory, procure 
from the Pope peace for his two sons. And 
so would end all my hopes ! Shall they so 
end, or shall I try my fortune? Nay, the 
place is for the young and not for me. If 
you were Ecelin ! — but stay — this youth 
has flattered me as I have not been flattered 
this many a day. A little help might make 
a leader of him." And turning he flings 
upon Sordello's neck the Emperor's badge. 

" You are Romano's head, and you shall 
have Palma for your spouse ! " 

Then as they gazed into each other's eyes 
a truth grew up between them ; sire and son 
sat by each other, while Palma recounted 
the tale she had heard from Adelaide's 
dying lips, and they learned that on that 
awful night of fire and slaughter Retrude, 
Salinguerra's wife, had been rescued with 
her infant, and borne to Goito, where she 



i io The Story of the Poem. 

shortly after died, and was buried beneath 
the font where Sordello so oft had rested. 
Her son was hidden away by Adelaide, and 
feigned an archer's child, lest Taurello, hav- 
ing him to live for, should come into his 
true place, and overtop her husband. 

Hardly able to grasp the truth, Salin- 
guerra talks wildly of all he will do for his 
son, so late known to him, until Palma 
takes his arms from Sordello's neck, and 
leads him from the room. Still he talks on 
of politics with Palma, when she turns him 
from that subject to tell him how all men 
love the poet, while Taurello drinks in every 
word, and foretells great glory to Romano 
when Palma and Sordello shall be united. 
Strong they shall be, he declares, to over- 
throw Hildebrand and build up Charles, 
but adding to strength knowledge. 

Suddenly a sound comes to them, which 
silences speech. " 'T is his own footstep, 
his summons ! " and they stagger quickly 
up the stair. 



BOOK VI. 




T was a thought of Eglamor's that 
man shrinks into nothingness when 
matched with the symbols of im- 
mensity, and must quail before a quiet sea- 
or sky. And as the evening sank low, and 
only one spot of light gleamed upon the 
opposite river, something in Sordello's mood 
seemed to confirm its speciousness. So he 
sat, until roused by the din of the city, 
while memory brought all his own life in re- 
view before him, a life where each change 
seemed to him to have been right, until, 
viewing it in the light of present knowledge, 
he could see how it had checked some other. 
The true way seemed to be formed of all 
ways, many moods of the one mind, tokens 
of an existence which needed but some outer 
influence, some soul above his soul to lift it, 
as the moon stirs the depths of ocean. But 



ii2 The Story of the Poem. 

no moon of love arose in his sky, and thus 
his sensitiveness had grown or dwindled at 
caprice, and was spilt in showers of foam, 
never gathered up into one mighty wave en- 
compassing the earth. Others, less than he, 
had yet some core within, that, yielding to 
some moon, fulfilled a certain purpose in the 
world. 

To every one who lives there must be 
some fruit of life, to each in his own de- 
gree ; to every one there must be some point 
toward which he tends ; spirits, compressing 
all they know of beauty into one star of 
glory, dream that one day it will bestow 
upon them some gleams of its own splendor. 
Whether it be beauty that they crave, or 
knowledge, whether it be love or hate, they 
yet pursue something above them, some- 
thing beyond their present existence. Not 
that love like Palma's or hate like Salin- 
guerra's would be equal to swaying all Sor- 
dello. Why doubt that there must be some- 
where love to match his strength, some 
moon to be meet for his sea ? Why fear, 



The Story of the Poem. 113 

since he has known the Good, that he shall 
not some clay know the Best ? Ah, but the 
Best eludes us ; we had hoped for men far 
beyond those we see about us, and we may 
be foolish, seeing a good, to argue a best 
beyond* Is an external power needed ? 
May he not be ordained a law unto himself ? 
If laws are veiled in mercy to those who 
cannot strive unless some embodied want 
lure them on ! A stronger vision could en- 
dure the bodiless want, nor would it mistake 
a bauble for a truth. The People were him- 
self, and was he less impelled by pity to 
alter the discrepancies in their position 
than if a sickly part were abstracted from a 
sound whole, and palmed off upon him as 
alien suffering ? Proud to forsake himself, 
shall he aid the Guelf s ? No, all is himself, 
and all service rates alike, not serving one 
by destroying another, but all in time. 
" Put by the picturesque achievements for 
the present, and do the daily, common tasks." 
The People urge their claims, and he now 
realizes how much easier it is to do some 



ii4 The Story of the Poem. 

one great act, to soften signal horrors, than 
by constant, vast and hidden toil to assuage 
constant, vast and hidden suffering. Now 
the People are in need of help, and how 
small the service that he can render, ever 
could have rendered ! Let youth be aware 
that it has surprised one serviceable truth ; 
can it use it, and turn to seize a fresh prey ? 
Nay, it takes a lifetime to bring this within 
the comprehension of the crowd, and ere 
that is done the captor sees a crowd of other 
truths yet nobler, which he might learn had 
he as many lives. And he recalls the story 
of many a bard who has sunken below man- 
hood in grasping at the divine. 

" Yet to begin merits a crown ! Truth 
must be casual truth, nor is it likely that 
the whole truth, which, if rightly appre- 
hended, had sent the world upon its proper 
pathway, has ever been at one time in the 
world. One must be content with the 
chance sparkles now and then struck out." 
Now was the moment for Sordello's gleam, 
wretched though it was. He would dash 



The Story of the Poem. 115 

•the Caesar's badge to the ground, perhaps 
persuade Taurello to turn Frederick from 
his purpose ; at least he can bear witness to 
his own belief. But first let him consider ; 
were that little truly service ? " In the end, 
no doubt, but in the time between ? Would 
that it were as easy to see what each day's 
fraction of work should be, as to compre- 
hend what befits the sum of life ! " 

Sordello never doubts that he should aid 
the Guelfs, but to do this various natures 
must be controlled, and moved with refer- 
ence to future ends ; old loves and hates, 
the sympathy or aversion of the Present 
must be put aside for the sake of so feeble a 
Future. For slightest cause must men be 
saved if they will aid the Papal party, for 
slightest cause destroyed if they oppose it. 
Shall he ruin many good purposes for the 
sake of one ? Spoil a good work half done 
for one just begun ? Rise one step with the 
People to sink one? Evil is everywhere 
made beautiful ; shall Beauty then be thrust 
aside that we may be rid of Evil ? Is not 
Evil, after all, as natural a result as Good ? 



u6 The Story of the Poem. 

Pass over the struggles of trees and flow- 
ers with the seasons, the miserable strife 
among beasts, care only for man, and we 
see that it is the sorrow caused by the ills 
he suffers that charms one's sympathy ; were 
he free from sorrow he were free from you. 
Joy itself is but the overcoming of obstacles, 
the making the privileges of the few the pos- 
session of the many. The quiet perfections 
of Goito had wearied him, and it is by tri- 
umphing over difficulties that men win sal- 
vation; the view of life is disclosed by 
degrees, as we climb the mountain-sides ; 
scaling height after height, and piercing veil 
after misty veil, we take fresh courage ; in 
the soul is formed the idea of that Whole, 
which we must seek by Parts ; had the 
Whole been ours at first what enjoyment 
could have been ours of gradual gains? 
The time that seems so short to include all 
the Parts were more than enough to exhaust 
the Whole were it once attained, and all that 
we should have gained would be leave to 
look, not leave to do. To look beneath is 



The Story of the Poem. uy 

soon enjoyed, but to one who looks above, 
death comes before a tithe of life has been 
tasted. Live first, Sordello ! die then soon 
enough ! Give to body and spirit their first 
right, the right to life, and feel that you are 
able to extort joy from sorrow, and gold 
from clods, which to all but you are clods 
only, and would have remained forever 
such, had you not lighted for them your re- 
fining fires. 

It had been better if you had but secured 
an ampler treasure ! They crave, as it is, a 
share that ruins you, and will not save them. 
Why, for the sake of sympathy, should you 
renounce what delights you, and cannot 
benefit them ? Would all reach joy ? The 
road is one for all, but the times of journey- 
ing are many; hinder no soul that in the 
general march has the earlier start ; all 
come at length to the same point. Help on 
the crowd's Tlien, but remember how this 
badge would make your Now more joyous. 

As he mused, his capacity for action 
seemed to grow to giant size compared with 



/ 1 8 The Story of the Poem. 

the impotence of the world at large to profit 
by the sacrifice of his happiness. Shall he 
make nothing of his life because it is so 
brief? Nay, rather, for that very reason 
make more of it ! Leave virtue untried, 
and grasp the delights of sin, and if time 
condemn, Sordello will have slipped away to 
the quiet of Goito. 

The active few can cope with the many ; 
be active, then ! And even if the multitude 
suffer somewhat, 't is but one pang to the 
brimming bowl of pleasure. Does Fate 
really destine him to live in the Eternal 
City ? To live ! It is the cry of Sordello's 
heart, to live once before he dies ! Helps 
and hinderances he disregards if only he 
may live, live now, not wait for some tran- 
scendent future. Perhaps, after death, a 
grander glory may await his soul, but how 
to be enjoyed he cannot tell. Fate is ex- 
haustless for him, but does she bid him 
grasp what the present brings or wait for 
future splendors ? It were absurd to slight 
the present for the hereafter. Here is the 



The Story of the Poem. i ig 

crowd which he is willing to spend his life 
in serving, if only he may serve it. If not, 
why require more of him ? 

" I will take the gift," he cries, " nor will 
I falter in my journey, nor decry life and its 
delights. I will praise the World, though it 
be, as you declare, but the anteroom to a pal- 
ace ; shall I assume the airs of a palace be- 
fore its doors are open to me ? Shall I, in 
the enjoyment of future bliss, regret that I 
disdained what the present offers ? 

" Let me, then, have stronger hands and 
feet, but for the present no wings. And yet 
this cup, which I would drain even to the 
dregs, has been so often dashed aside ; I have 
so often had glimpses of a better life, hidden 
by this, a life fearlessly sought by martyr, 
champion, and sage. Let me but see that, 
and I too am glad to die. Let that which 
masters life but show itself ! But since 
truth appears so various, and every circle 
has its own law, how can one discern ab- 
stract right ? " And so for the moment all 
qualities of good and evil seemed to Sor- 



120 The Story of the Poem. 

dello but moods of this world, not made to 
bind Eternity and Mind. 

Then suddenly he felt himself alone, out 
of time and the world. What had caused 
all his past despair? Just this. Soul be- 
ing thrust upon matter, joy comes when so 
much soul is wreaked in time on matter, 
but if the soul raise matter beyond what 
was intended, and so prevent the perform- 
ance of actions, sorrow is the result. The in- 
finite soul tries to instruct the body as to its 
capabilities, and in yearning after perfection 
it loses the opportunities it might enjoy ; 
till, worn out with efforts to attain what is 
beyond its grasp, leaving virtue and beauty 
unattained, the soul seeks to show that these 
qualities belong to time alone, and that the 
body may turn ill to good, and reap joy 
where sorrow was meant to grow. Then the 
body perishes under what should have been 
a blessing, leaving the soul in dismay. Can 
one soul never behold all that is, the great 
Before and After, and the small Now? 
But where shall we find the supreme Love 



p 



The Story of the Poem. 121 

that shall show the course that soul must 
travel ? Here is a soul upon which Nature 
has exhausted all her resources, from tree 
and flower to mankind at large. Shall he 
save that or not ? 

Ah, Sordello, what need there is of a 
power so far above you that you cannot re- 
gard it as a rival ! Of a Power, the repre- 
sentative of nature, the same in authority 
but different in communication, which should 
claim a course clear as Human, though hid- 
den as Divine ! 

What has Sordello found! Or can his 
spirit go the mighty round to end where 
Eglamor began? As says the old fable, 
that two eagles flew two different ways 
about the earth, and where they met men 
set the temple of Jove. 

Whose step is first that rushes up the 
stair? It is Salinguerra's, though sheathed 
in mail. They enter, and behold Sordello 
dead, beneath his feet the badge, and in his 
eyes a look of triumph, like that of some 
spent swimmer, who sees in his despair help 



122 The Story of the Poem. 

coming from above ; for he has trampled 
upon what seemed to him a temptation to 
evil, the temptation to accept a life lower 
than his ideal, and has perished in the 
struggle, but the prize of victory is his. 

Alas, Sordello, whom they laid in the old 
font-tomb at Goito at his mother's side ! 

Time passes, and young Ecelin comes to 
fill the first place in Lombardy. Strange 
that Sordello's inability to shut out rivals 
from the stage, an inability due to his fatal 
disbelief in the possibility of accomplishing 
anything, thrust the two sons of Romano 
into Taurello's guardianship, and enabled 
the wretched pair to demonstrate that 
wherever there is the will to do, something 
can always be done, whether for good or ill. 
And so they plagued the world, till men 
rose up and slew them* 

The chronicles of Mantua tell how Sor- 
dello, Prince Visconti, saved that city and 
elsewhere distinguished himself greatly ; 
that he was famous as a minstrel and fortu- 



The Story of the Poem. 123 

nate as a lover ; he was praised for the 
very things he never did and never could 
have done. 

For what he should have been, what he 
might have been and would not, we suffer 
to this day. The best chance that there 
was for humanity Ecelin destroyed before 
Dante could come, and for the sake of the 
suffering world dared boldly to take the step 
Sordello spurned. Dante did much, Sor- 
dello's chance was lost forever. 

Had he dared take that step alone, he 
had compassed Apollo. It was a chance, he 
would have come to him rather than go to it. 

Like one who would gladly sleep at home, 
while supposed to be fighting or singing 
abroad, he valued the few real things he 
had achieved mainly because he had thus 
learned that they are valueless and need 
never be done again. 

Had Sordello but boldly embraced the 
chance then offered to him, men would have 
plucked the apples of Hesperides, and prais- 
ing the benefits that he bestowed, have 



124 The Story of the Poem. 

given him all that he wished to appear, but 
hardly desired to be. 

After all a life such as his is but a sorry 
farce. Can we say nothing better of him 
than this ? 

In the bright summer morning while the 
lark sings, mounting heavenward, above the 
castle- walls, a merry boy brushes the dew 
from the grass as he passes, and glad at 
heart he sings — his song one fragment of 
the old Goito lay, that spoke the praise of 
Elys. Sleep and forget, Sordello ! 



A STUDY OF THE CHARACTER 
OF SORDELLO. 



You say, " Since so it is, good-bye, 
Sweet life, high hope ; but whatsoe'er 

May be, or must, no tongue shall dare 
To tell, ' The Lombard feared to die ! ■ " 
Abthuk Hugh Clough. 



A STUDY OF THE CHARACTER OF 
SORDELLO. 

Mr. Browning tells us that the story of 
Sordello is the history of the development of 
a soul. 

It would seem to be, in some respects, the 
story of a soul whose complete and harmo- 
nious development has been thwarted by 
the circumstances amid which it finds it- 
self ; cut off by a lonely life from the edu- 
cating influences of the outside world and 
from that correction of individual views that 
comes from contact with one's fellows. 

His is a soul whose noblest aspirations 
are hindered by a certain self-consciousness 
from which it can never escape ; a soul too 
weak and inexperienced to control circum- 
stances, too willful to follow, but not ardent 
enough to lead ; too unformed in judgment 
of men and of affairs, and too deficient in 



128 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

political insight to discover the better way ; 
too true and noble to accept what it believes 
to be the worse. 

He is the son of a brave and accom- 
plished mediaeval chieftain, who has been 
nurtured in camps and courts, and who, like 
so many of his contemporaries, is statesman, 
courtier, warrior, and minstrel in one ; his 
mother is of that wondrous Hohenstaufen 
House, in which great mental gifts seem to 
have been a birthright. But Sordello, with 
a soul full of lofty ambitions, grows up in 
the belief that he is an archer's son, who is 
held to have attained high honor when he 
has become his lady's chosen minstrel. 

His boyhood and youth are passed in a 
romantic castle, situated in a solitary spot, 
among the mountains, surrounded by woods 
and marshes, in the company of a few ob- 
jects of semi-classic art, and with trees and 
flowers, animals and birds for his play-fel- 
lows, while over him bends the blue Italian 
sky. 

Human companionship he has none ; his 



Study of the Character of Sordello. i2g 

heart swells with longing to enter into the 
life of everything about him ; plant and ani- 
mal gain a certain spiritual life from him, 
but at the expense of too great self-efface- 
ment on his part. The figures that are 
most like humanity are the painted warriors 
on the arras, and these, too, in his fancies, 
he bids live and act. 

All the castle is free to him, save the 
northern chambers, and so, too, are the 
woods and fields about it ; of anything of 
the outer world he has but two brief 
glimpses : one, when accidentally penetrat- 
ing into the forbidden apartments, he en- 
counters the Ladye of the castle and a fair 
maiden, who sits beside her; one, when 
Ecelin, the master of the house, comes to 
visit his wife and daughter, and Sordello 
watches his archer train wind slowly in and 
out among the vines, and recognizes even 
then that there may be a tie of kinship be- 
tween the humble house-leek on the roof 
and the proud baron in his ringing mail. 

A few chance words spoken by the bow- 



130 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

men, a hint now and then from the foreign 
serving-women about him, are all the reports 
that come to him from the outside life of 
the world. 

Time passes in vague dreams and aimless 
fantasies ; unconscious himself of the want, 
he stands. in need of some power outside of 
and beyond himself, some overmastering 
purpose that shall show to him some goal 
towards which to strive. As he grows older 
he ceases to make trees and flowers his com- 
rades, their places are filled by human im- 
ages, or rather by certain personified essen- 
tial qualities of humanity, as strength, 
grace, wisdom ; these qualities are gradually 
combined in his mind until they are reduced 
to a few, which are in their turn resolved 
into one grand personality, to which he longs 
to give a name. 

Who is this type of all wise and heroic 
qualities? Is it the Caesar? Or does he 
dwell in such ineffable greatness, so remote 
from the life of the multitude, that no touch 
of emotion can come to him from the crowd 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 131 

of unhappy men and women who are perish- 
ing for lack of help ? 

Or is it perhaps the minstrel, who rules 
the world by song ? 

Is it possible that it may one day be his 
destiny to combine the two, to act and to 
sing, to be both Caesar and Apollo ? 

But there is in Sordello's spiritual life 
one fatal defect, a certain self-consciousness, 
that will one day be his ruin; he never 
ceases to question what men will think 
about him, how his deeds and words are re- 
garded by the world. Even when, in his 
dreams, he has trampled all his foes beneath 
his feet and only admiring worshipers re- 
main ; when in his heart he has taken the 
proud resolve that only his lord's fair daugh- 
ter, who has hitherto disdained all suitors, 
shall be his future bride, the Daphne to his 
Apollo ; — even then he cannot refrain from 
looking forward to the time when the whole 
world shall see and envy him her love, and 
when great cities shall bow down before him 
in reverence for his fame. 



j $2 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

That world with which he has never 
measured himself, whose stern criticism he 
has never felt, for conflict with which he has 
never yet braced heart and soul, is waiting, 
he believes, but for his coming to hail him 
for its king ! 

Then comes the day which brings him be- 
fore his wished-for public, the day which 
makes him Palma's minstrel. His triumph 
for the moment is complete, but he soon 
ceases to be content with his position. He 
cares more for the effect his song produces, 
than he does for the song itself, and he be- 
comes weary of the labor which the work 
requires. He falls into conventional ways, 
and is satisfied with laurels too lightly won. 
At length he sickens of popular applause, 
and withdraws for a time from public view, 
that he may devote himself to the task of 
elaborating a more perfect instrument of ex- 
pression. He desires to make the Italian as 
suitable for poetic use as the more polished 
Langued'Oc; he would sing in the speech 
of the people, and so become more fully the 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 1 33 

people's poet. And he has a momentary 
success. But he fails to thoroughly embody 
in words the fervid perceptions which offer 
themselves, they are too subtle and evanes- 
cent to be intellectually apprehended, or ex- 
pressed. Up to this moment he has felt 
only, he has not yet thought. The Man- 
tuans care little for his efforts ; they prefer 
to walk in trodden paths, and he abandons 
his language, wrought with so much care, 
takes up the old measures and the common 
themes, and sings the exploits of a crusad- 
ing hero. Even now his full meaning is 
missed, and weary of being perpetually mis- 
understood, Sordello once more withdraws 
from public life. 

He feels two natures struggling within 
him, man and poet : the man craves action 
and life in the world ; the poet longs for 
solitude and song ; he cannot reconcile the 
two. 

" Take things as they are," say the Man- 
tuans ; " suit yourself to the ordinary ways 
of life." He tries and fails again. 



i}4 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

Then Taurello comes to Mantua, and as 
Palma's minstrel it is Sordello's duty to bid 
him welcome ; but inspiration fails him, and 
he flees to Goito, where nature soothes his 
grief, and calms his troubled soul. His 
mind sleeps, and he knows that it does so. 

Is it really true that his youth can never 
return, that he has forfeited all hopes of 
love and power and fame ? Must all aspi- 
rations be abandoned forever? He feels 
that even the crowd of common men have 
this advantage over him, that they are en- 
dowed with a personality distinct from what 
they see, while he is perpetually driven to 
blend himself with all that he beholds. Is 
it his fate to be forever thrust aside, the 
spectator of joys to which he can never at- 
tain? Rather seize any happiness that 
offers ! — and with the thought comes a 
message bidding him return to Mantua. 
And here love greets him while Palma 
smiles, and whispers at once of her love for 
him for whom she has so long waited, and of 
the political schemes in which she seeks his 
aid. 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 1 35 

Of late Sordello's soul has been inspired 
with a new and more unselfish purpose, the 
wish to help mankind. He pities the suffer- 
ings of the multitude, and longs to aid. He 
knows not by what means his ends are to be 
attained, whether political or social. He 
sees the horrors of the conflict between 
Guelf and Ghibelline, but he feels sure that 
there must be some choice between them, 
that the great question is, which can most 
effectually help the people. He talks with 
Salinguerra, he listens to Palma, and im- 
plores her to teach him to play a man's part 
in the world, and, wandering through the 
streets ravaged by war, he hears from a by- 
stander in the market-place the story of 
Crescentius, as it appears encircled with the 
mythic glories of the past ; the legend of 
the Tribune, who would have built up a 
Rome without a Pope and without an Em- 
peror. 

This, Sordello fancies, may be his des- 
tined work. To rebuild Rome ! But it 
must be the Rome of the People, and he 



136 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

finds that the people as they are, down-trod- 
den, brutal, ignorant, are not fit to be the 
denizens of his ideal city. It behooves him 
now to remember how great was the work 
to found the Rome of old ; to remember how 
men have worked their way upward from 
the cave-dwellers to the architects of palaces 
and temples ; that every succeeding step has 
been taken with weariness and toil; that 
the many can accomplish more than any 
one, but that there must always be the one 
man to take the first step, to lead the way, 
it may be to perish in so doing. That the 
work moves on by slow degrees, helped by 
many hands. If all could be instantly 
caught up to the standpoint of one greatest 
soul, if all epochs could be merged in one, 
the sudden city would glitter in splendor in 
the noonday sun, but its citizens would be 
unable either to comprehend or enjoy its 
delights. 

And so he puts that dream by. Then he 
seems to hear a voice within him saying that 
God has vouchsafed to man two sights : one 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 1 37 

of the future with its completed work, that 
perfect ideal which is to be one day the 
actual ; one of the daily tasks that must be 
wrought to make that work complete ; the 
glimpse of the first should encourage us to 
undertake the second, to compass both is be- 
yond the lot of mortal. Each must work 
for all ; each has his share, however small, 
to contribute ; the step that each man takes 
helps on the universal march. 

But Sordello is not the first who has 
sought to form mankind into a definite 
shape — to make of Humanity an organic 
whole. Centuries before there had blos- 
somed a splendid flower that had drawn all 
things into itself ; Charles the Great had 
lived, an embodiment of joyous, active, fruit- 
fid life, incarnate strength. Was it the part 
of Hildebrand to spiritualize this body? 
Does the Empire represent strength and the 
Church knowledge? Has either accom- 
plished all that it might have done ? The 
League opposes force by force ; were it not 
better to listen to the voice of the gentle 



138 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

friar who is preaching of peace? Can 
knowledge render strength needless? Is 
the work of Hildebrand to supersede the 
work of Charles ? Sordello believes so, and 
determines to overthrow the latter. He 
ponders long, and sees that the task is be- 
yond his power, the work is too strong to be 
destroyed, the State is needful to man ; 
strength must be combined with knowledge, 
Caesar and Apollo, knight and minstrel, 
must strive together to the same end. 

He seeks Salinguerra to convert him to 
Guelfic politics, and entreat his aid to bene- 
fit the world. There is a strange mixture 
of tragedy and comedy in the scene between 
Taurello and his unknown son, between the 
all-accomplished cavalier to whom all graces 
come unsought, and the poet, old before his 
time, ignorant of the world, without tact, 
and possessed by an idea, which yet "does 
not so thoroughly possess him as to render 
him oblivious of self and careless of what 
others may think or say of him. 

He tells the fiery Ghibelline, whose life 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 1 39 

has been blasted by Guelfic hate, that the 
Pope's cause is the cause of humanity ; he 
tells the haughty noble that the one thing 
that Lombardy most needs is to be rid of 
her barons ! 

Suddenly he realizes the absurdity of the 
situation ; — the god of Goito sunken into 
a partisan of the Guelf s ! But the touch of 
playful sarcasm which Taurello cannot re- 
sist rouses Sordello at last to something 
really living, and he bursts forth into a 
splendid eulogium of the rank and functions 
of the poet, and the scene ends with the con- 
ferring of the viceroyalty upon him by Sa- 
linguerra, and the disclosure by Palma of 
the true relations in which the two stand to 
each other. Then she withdraws the bewil- 
dered father from the room, and Sordello is 
left to meditate upon his position, and de- 
termine upon his future course. 

If he accept the viceroyalty he will have 
all of its best that life can give him, and he 
longs for the joys of life. Why should he 
put off the enjoyment of happiness to an- 



140 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

other world, to a future state in which he 
may reproach himself that he had under- 
valued the gifts of the present ? If this world 
be indeed but the ante-chamber of a palace, 
so be it ; but why assume, as yet, the airs of 
the palace ? Never for the sake of his own 
pleasure will he deprive any man of his 
rights ; all paths lead to the same goal, the 
road is free to all, and all men shall cer- 
tainly arrive at last at the longed-for desti- 
nation. 

But it may well be that some shall reach 
the end toward which they toil earlier than 
others because they have the advantage in 
the start. 

But is there, after all, as some have said, 
anything nobler to be attained than earthly 

j°y ? 

If that indeed be so, for that supreme 
happiness he will gladly forego all present 
delights. 

But what is the true path into which the 
loftiest aspirations should lead his steps? 
What is the cause of truth and duty and 
God? 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 141 

He had believed it possible for him to 
find a third cause to which to consecrate his 
powers, the cause of the people, but it seems 
to him now that from the people themselves 
he can look for but little assistance ; the 
third cause is not yet, at least, self-support- 
ing, it cannot stand alone. He believes 
that it must be committed to the guardian- 
ship of one of the two parties which seem to 
divide the world between them, that he 
must range himself with either Guelf or 
Ghibelline. 

And he believes, too, that the choice lies 
with the Guelf s. Without experience, prone 
to theorize with but a slight comprehension 
of facts as a basis, he decides that the world 
must be saved through knowledge, and that 
this knowledge is to be found in the Church 
alone. 

He makes, as he thinks, the choice be- 
tween Charles and Hildebrand; had he 
comprehended the work of the first Teutonic 
' Emperor, he had not so believed ; had he 
known anything of the Hohenstaufen in 



/^2 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

whose reign he lived, he would never have 
so fatally misjudged. 

But in his frame of mind the imperial 
vieeroyalty comes to him in the guise of a 
temptation to abandon his convictions of 
right, and for once in his life Sordello gath- 
ers up all his forces for one mighty effort, 
one great struggle to overcome. And the 
effort is in itself a triumph. He flings the 
Caesar's badge upon the ground, and tram- 
ples beneath his feet its glittering lure. 
Action is forbidden him ; his only privilege 
is to renounce, and when he resolutely 
thrusts behind him all the joys of earth, 
death opens to him in mercy the gates of 
Heaven. He has won a spiritual victory 
and the reward of all efforts to overcome 
self, and to grasp a noble ideal is his. 

" 'Tis better to have fought, and lost, 
Than never to have fought at all ! ' ' 

But for his failures in courage, in faith and 
judgment, the world, alas ! must suffer. 

He could not see that, for good or for 
evil, something can always be done, if the 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 143 

fixed will to do exist ; that his own judg- 
ment in political affairs was too devoid of 
experience to be of any value, and that in 
taking up the work which was placed at his 
disposal he would have secured an unri- 
valed opportunity to aid the suffering, and 
relieve the oppressed. 

His inexperience of the world, his inca- 
pacity to forget himself, his scorn of gradual 
progress toward the desired end, joined to 
Palma's inability to inspire him with her 
own spirit, all led him astray. 

As it seemed to him, the viceroyalty was 
a temptation, and he justly spurned it, but 
then came in his place the sons of Romano, 
and made the land a hell. 

The language he had abandoned, Dante, a 
century later, made an unsurpassed vehicle, 
not only of the most fervid perception, but 
of the profoundest thought. The political 
views he rejected were the life of Dante's 
soul, as deeply felt and as sincerely cher- 
ished as his religion. But he combined 
strength and knowledge ; he was Caesar and 



144 Study of the Character of Sordello. 

Apollo, Man and Poet in one. And he did 
much. " Sordello's chance," says Mr. 
Browning, " was gone." 

But Dante never forgot that Sordello had 
taken one of those first steps which cost, 
albeit he had not the faith or persistence to 
continue in the path upon which he had en- 
tered. The future generations gave to the 
Sordello of legend all the worldly success 
which he had so vainly longed for, and fan- 
cied him triumphant as warrior, statesman, 
and lover ; but his truest glory is, that, first 
of northern Italians, he strove to sing to the 
people in their own tongue, that he took the 
first step upon that Sacred Way over which 
Dante marched in triumph. 

On the Mount of Purgatory, gracious and 
calm, but lonely as on earth, the Mantuan 
Sordello greets the Mantuan Virgil, his im- 
mortal countryman, and gives a kindly wel- 
come to the mighty Tuscan, who is destined 
so grandly to fulfill what had been to the 
Troubadour aspirations only. 

And on the sunny slopes of Mount Par- 



Study of the Character of Sordello. 145 

nassus, where the divine Apollo sits, sur- 
rounded by his disciples, there, among the 
greatest poets of the world, has Raphael 
placed Sordello. 

The lofty poet, whose vision penetrated 
into the darkest abysses and the most ra- 
diant splendors of the other world, a sorrow- 
ful exile from his native city, unites with 
the gentle, happy painter in rendering im- 
mortal the name of one whose earthly life 
had seemed to himself a failure, whose one 
supreme success was the renunciation of all 
the joys of earth and even of life itself. 



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